Installation

HAProxy is available in most Linux distributions, but default package versions are often outdated.

Fortunately, the HAProxy team maintains an official package repository that provides up-to-date and supported versions for easy installation on Ubuntu.

Install the PPA by running the following commands:

sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:vbernat/haproxy-3.2

Install the haproxy package:

sudo apt-get install -y haproxy

By default, HAProxy loads its configuration from a single file at /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg. While this works well for simple setups, it's often a good idea to separate configurations for better organization and maintainability.

Fortunately, HAProxy makes this easy with a small configuration change:

echo 'CONFIG="/etc/haproxy"' | sudo tee -a /etc/default/haproxy

This configures the HAProxy service to load all .cfg files from the /etc/haproxy directory.

You can now start the service:

sudo systemctl enable --now haproxy

As mentioned earlier, HAProxy is included in most Linux distributions, making it easy to install using the default package manager.

However, there are several other installation methods available. Let's take a quick look at some of them.

Container image

Of course, HAProxy is also available as an official container image:

docker run --rm haproxy

Be sure to check the official documentation for additional configuration options and usage details.

NixOS

HAProxy is available on NixOS:

{
  services.haproxy = {
    enable = true;
    config = ''
      listen my_service
        bind :80
        server server-01 server-01:80 check
    '';
  };
}

See the NixOS option reference for more details and configuration options.

Kubernetes

HAProxy is available as an Ingress controller for Kubernetes and also supports the Gateway API, making it a powerful and flexible entry point for traffic into Kubernetes clusters.

Check out the official documentation to learn more about installation options.