Load Balancing Strategies: From Theory to Practice with HAProxy
Date & Time
- Event: Africa Internet Summit - AIS 2024
- Date: September 5, 2024
- Time: 13:00 - 15:30
Intended Audience
This workshop is specifically designed for Senior Systems Engineers who are looking to deepen their understanding of load balancing and HAProxy configuration.
Description
This workshop is a comprehensive 2-hour session that includes both theoretical concepts and practical hands-on labs, with a short break. The session covers the following topics:
Agenda
Introduction (5 minutes)
- Brief overview of load balancing concepts
- Importance of load balancing in modern infrastructure
Load Balancing Fundamentals (15 minutes)
- Types of load balancers:
* Layer 4 (L4) vs. Layer 7 (L7)
- Common load balancing algorithms:
* Round Robin * Least Connections * IP Hash
- Health checks and failure handling
Introduction to HAProxy (10 minutes)
- Overview of HAProxy and its key features
- Architecture and components of HAProxy
HAProxy Configuration Basics (20 minutes)
- Structure of the HAProxy configuration file
- Key sections:
* Frontend * Backend
- Access Control Lists (ACLs) and `use_backend` rules
Advanced HAProxy Features (20 minutes)
- SSL termination
- Sticky sessions
- HTTP rewriting and redirection
- Logging and monitoring
Live Demo: Setting up HAProxy (30 minutes)
- Installing HAProxy
- Configuring a basic load balancer
- Testing and verifying the setup
- Demonstration of advanced features
Best Practices and Performance Tuning (10 minutes)
- Optimization of HAProxy configuration
- Security considerations
- Scaling HAProxy
Session Hands-On
- Slides "click here"
- HAProxy Lab Setup Guide - Multi-OS Installation