Re: Feature List

Hi guys,

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 10:41:32PM +0200, Aleksandar Lazic wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Don 27.09.2007 10:49, Pradeep Kumar wrote:
> >Hi,
> > I am evaluating HAProxy to use in a High Availability production
> > environment, At first sight it appears to be pretty good product. I
> > am trying to look for some information for further evaluation
> > before I take a decision, appreciate if any one here can help me
> >
> >1. Which version is recommended to use in Production
>
> maybe 1.3.12.2 :)?

It depends on what you're looking for. The officially stable version is 1.2.17. It has very few known bugs, its doc match what it does.

But many people require more features than what 1.2 can bring them, the most common one is the content switching implemented in 1.3. Other people need a higher level of performance. For this reason, I forked 1.3.12 in order to maintain a "supported" version. 1.3.12 has some bugs, most of them have been quickly screened out and fixed by a bunch of people on this list. Right now, many people use 1.3.12. it's the one which is shipped with debian, fedora and freebsd. So for all these considerations, it's the most active version, the one you'd get the faster fixes for. It is the version we ship with our appliances at Exceliance, so I certainly trust it enough to do that. And I know people who use it in environments with very high expectations.

However, the doc is not 100% accurate, and sometimes you'll have to figure some things by yourself (or ask the list). You'll also have to upgrade it from time to time to fix the last bunch of bugs, while 1.2 will only see one or two fixes in the upcoming year.

> >2. Does it support Direct Server Return as well, if yes where can I
> > find some sample implementation
>
> Sorry, what do you mean *exactly* with this?

DSR is the feature used in LVS or Alteon, which consists in directing the traffic to the server without modifying anything (Alteon does not even change the source MAC by default). When the server responds, it does so through the default gateway, without passing through the LB again.

This is only doable with routing-based load balancers (those are mostly layer 3/4, and sometimes provide buggy L7 features). Haproxy is a proxy based layer 7 LB. So the server receives the connection from the LB and not from the client. It has to respond to the LB. This is a common question from people who have been experiencing performance limitations on entry-level, hardware-based load balancers. For instance, you buy a 100 Mbps LB, which can process 100 Mbps of incoming traffic, and still push 1 gigabit to the net because you do not pass through it.

With haproxy on todays hardware, you don't have this problem. Some people use it at full gigabit speed on medium servers. For instance, a 1.8 GHz, dual-core opteron can sustain about 25000 hits/s and about 1.6 Gbps of HTTP traffic. In this case, DSR is completely useless. And when Alex will finish his TCP splicing code, we will be limited by the internal busses or the network cards.

> >3. Can any one guide me to the feature list supported by the product.
>
> What do you missing on the Homepage or in the docs?

I think everything is there. Check the "news" page too for the small parts I may not have updated in the home page.

> Cheers
>
> Aleks

Thanks,
willy Received on 2007/09/29 12:19