HAProxy Load Balancing Setup Based On URL

Until today I was using the basic HAProxy settings, Today i found a task about selection of backend server basis of url request. While working on this task, I learned about HAProxy ACLs.

Task: I have wordpress installed as http://domainname.com/blog . This domain is running from 2 back-end server and balanced by HAProxy, The task is to redirect all /blog request to only single server.

Network Scenario for this setup

• HAProxy Server: 192.168.1.90
• WEB1 : 192.168.1.103
• WEB2 : 192.168.1.105
• Domain: tecadmin.net

The below example includes ACL for url_beg. url_beg matches the string used in url submitted. Using the url all requests starting with /blog ( tecadmin.net/blog ) will redirect to WEB2 ( 192.168.1.105 ) Server. All other requests will redirect to one of two server ( WEB1, WEB2 ), depending on load balancing algorithm used.

Here is a quick example of uses url_beg ACL:

global
    log 127.0.0.1 local0 notice
    maxconn 50000
    daemon
defaults
    log global
    mode http
    option httplog
    option dontlognull
    contimeout 120000
    clitimeout 120000
    srvtimeout 120000
    option forwardfor
    option http-server-close

# Configuration for HTTP site
frontend http-in
    bind 192.168.1.90:80
    acl is_blog url_beg  /blog
    use_backend tecadmin_blog if is_blog
    default_backend tecadmin_website

backend tecadmin_blog
    mode http
    balance roundrobin  # Load Balancing algorithm
    option httpchk
    option forwardfor
    server WEB2 192.168.1.105:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check

backend tecadmin_website
    mode http
    balance roundrobin  # Load Balancing algorithm
    option httpchk
    option forwardfor
    server WEB1 192.168.1.103:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check
    server WEB2 192.168.1.105:80 weight 1 maxconn 512 check

I hope this tutorial will help you to configure some basic ACL with haproxy .Regarding full configuration settings available for the ACL are listed in the haproxy configuration doc,