Installing HAProxy

1. Differences between HAProxy Community and Enterprise #

Understand the key differences between the two HAProxy editions to choose the one that best fits your needs.

HAProxy Community #

The Community edition is the open source core of HAProxy, developed and maintained by an active community.

Advantages:

• Free and open source: free access to the source code and no license required.
• Innovation: gets the latest features and innovations quickly.
• Flexibility: can be compiled from source with specific options for very precise needs.
• Community: support through forums, mailing lists and community contributions.

Drawbacks:

• Support: no official commercial support or SLA (Service Level Agreement).
• Life cycles: versions can have shorter support cycles, requiring more frequent updates.
• Advanced features: some features (advanced WAF, bot protection) are not included natively or require complex manual integration.
• Management: no built-in management dashboard; relies on third-party tools for monitoring and configuration.

How to recognize it?

On the command line, haproxy -v usually shows HAProxy version X.Y.Z without any specific mention of « Enterprise » or « HAPEE ». The package name is usually haproxy.

HAProxy Enterprise (HAPEE) #

HAProxy Enterprise is a commercial version of HAProxy, designed for critical production environments.

Advantages:

• Commercial support: access to 24/7 technical support with SLAs.
• Stability and LTS: Long Term Support (LTS) versions with backported security and bug fixes, ensuring high stability.
• Exclusive features: includes advanced modules such as a sophisticated WAF (Web Application Firewall), bot protection, API gateway capabilities and specific performance optimizations.
• Centralized management: provides a graphical management interface (HAProxy Enterprise Suite) for configuration, monitoring and analysis.
• Integration: optimized for integration with cloud ecosystems and orchestration tools.

Drawbacks:

• Cost: requires a commercial license.
• Innovation: may introduce the very latest Community features with a slight delay, favoring stability.

How to recognize it?

The haproxy -v command shows HAProxy Enterprise Edition or HAPEE. Package names follow the hapee-X.Y-lb format.

In short #

Before installing, it is important to choose the edition that fits your needs. HAProxy is available in two distinct versions: Community and Enterprise.

Community vs Enterprise edition

• HAProxy Community: the cutting-edge open source version. It contains the latest features and innovations. It is ideal for test environments or infrastructures managed by teams with strong technical expertise.
• HAProxy Enterprise (HAPEE): a stabilized version optimized for production. It includes exclusive modules (advanced WAF, global dashboard), 24/7 technical support, and security fixes backported to LTS (Long Term Support) versions.

2. Installing on servers (Linux) #

HAProxy is available natively in the repositories of most distributions. The method differs by OS family.

Debian family (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint) #

Installation on Debian or Ubuntu uses the apt package manager. To get the latest stable (LTS) versions, it is recommended to use the official community repositories maintained by Vincent Bernat.

For Ubuntu:

# Définir la version souhaitée (ex: 3.0, 3.1)
HAPROXY_VERSION="3.1"

sudo apt update
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vbernat/haproxy-${HAPROXY_VERSION} -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install haproxy -y

For Debian:

# Définir la version souhaitée (ex: 3.0, 3.1)
HAPROXY_VERSION="3.1"

# Installation des prérequis
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl gpg lsb-release -y
# Ajout de la clé et du dépôt officiel debian.haproxy.org
curl https://haproxy.debian.net/bernat.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/haproxy.debian.net.gpg > /dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/haproxy.debian.net.gpg] http://haproxy.debian.net $(lsb_release -cs)-backports-${HAPROXY_VERSION} main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/haproxy.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install haproxy -y

Red Hat family (RHEL, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky) #

On recent Red Hat systems (RHEL 8/9+), dnf is used. Although HAProxy is in the AppStream repositories, enabling the EPEL repository is recommended to get more recent versions:

# Installation d'EPEL
sudo dnf install epel-release -y
# Installation de HAProxy
sudo dnf install haproxy -y
# Activation et démarrage immédiat
sudo systemctl enable --now haproxy

To validate the installation and see the build options, use haproxy -v.

3. Installing with containers #

Containerization makes it easier to deploy and isolate the load balancer.

Without an orchestrator (Docker) #

Running HAProxy with Docker is ideal for simple needs or testing. The official image from Docker Hub is generally used. It is crucial to mount the configuration file locally.

# Définir la version souhaitée (ex: 3.0, 3.1, latest)
HAPROXY_VERSION="3.1"

docker run -d --name my-haproxy \
    -v /path/to/haproxy.cfg:/usr/local/etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg:ro \
    -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
    haproxy:${HAPROXY_VERSION}

The :ro argument ensures that the container cannot modify your original configuration file.

With an orchestrator (Kubernetes / Swarm) #

In an orchestrated environment such as Kubernetes, HAProxy is often deployed as an Ingress Controller. It does not simply load a fixed configuration; it watches the Kubernetes API to update its routes dynamically.

The recommended installation uses Helm:

helm repo add haproxy-ingress https://haproxy-ingress.github.io/charts
helm install ingress-controller haproxy-ingress/haproxy-ingress

With Docker Swarm, you use a docker-compose.yml file deployed as a stack, relying on the overlay network to reach the application services.

4. HAProxy Enterprise Edition (HAPEE) #

HAProxy Enterprise is an optimized, stabilized and supported version for critical environments (Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Rocky, AlmaLinux).

Installing with the official script #

The simplest method is to use the unified installation script. It automatically configures the GPG repositories and package sources for your distribution:

# Définir la version souhaitée (ex: 2.9, 3.0, 3.1)
HAPROXY_VERSION="3.1"

# Téléchargement et exécution du script d'installation officiel
curl https://www.haproxy.com/static/install_haproxy_enterprise.sh | sudo bash -s -- \
    --key YOUR_LICENSE_KEY \
    --version ${HAPROXY_VERSION}

The script installs the hapee-${HAPROXY_VERSION}-lb package. You can then start the service with systemctl enable --now hapee-${HAPROXY_VERSION}-lb.

Alternative: manual installation

Manual installation with apt, dnf or Docker, ... is possible. It requires manually creating a repository file pointing to https://www.haproxy.com/download/hapee/key/... using your key as the authentication parameter.

5. Conclusion #

Choosing the right strategy.

Verdict #

Server installation (bare metal / VM) remains the norm for edge load balancers that need maximum performance. Containerization, through Ingress Controllers, has become essential for the flexibility of the cloud and microservices.