# Anyone have any experience with HAproxy?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** docker
**Created:** [June 2, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560 "2015-06-02T16:32:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AstonJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AstonJ)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2015, 4:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/1 "2015-06-02T16:32:55Z")
I’ve installed Docker on my server and it seems to be working fine, however I already have several sites on this Apache server and I read that we should avoid mod\_proxy and use HAproxy instead - but I am unsure how to proceed.
Is it possible to have HAproxy direct all traffic for a specific domain (the Discourse docker container) to a specific port, then everything else as normal?
Any help in getting this configured would be appreciated :- )
---
### Author:  [@mac](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mac)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/2 "2015-06-02T16:45:08Z")
You want to filter for that domain on the defined front end, and then ensure it routes to whatever port you want to use on the back end. HAproxy is (in my opinion) completely awesome and deserves a deeper dive because it can be useful for so much more than just web services.
This should give you a solid starting point:
[http://seanmcgary.com/posts/haproxy—route-by-domain-name](http://seanmcgary.com/posts/haproxy---route-by-domain-name)
---
### Author:  [@AstonJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AstonJ)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2015, 1:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/3 "2015-06-03T01:20:34Z")
Thanks @macsmith71
Does the config below look ok to you? Am I right in thinking that if something doesn’t match the acl, it will default to the `default_backend`?
```
global
# to have these messages end up in /var/log/haproxy.log you will
# need to:
#
# 1) configure syslog to accept network log events. This is done
# by adding the '-r' option to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS in
# /etc/sysconfig/syslog
#
# 2) configure local2 events to go to the /var/log/haproxy.log
# file. A line like the following can be added to
# /etc/sysconfig/syslog
#
# local2.* /var/log/haproxy.log
#
log 127.0.0.1 local2
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
pidfile /var/run/haproxy.pid
maxconn 4000
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
# turn on stats unix socket
stats socket /var/lib/haproxy/stats
defaults
mode http
log global
option httplog
option dontlognull
option http-server-close
option forwardfor except 127.0.0.0/8
option redispatch
retries 3
timeout http-request 10s
timeout queue 1m
timeout connect 10s
timeout client 1m
timeout server 1m
timeout http-keep-alive 10s
timeout check 10s
maxconn 3000
frontend http-in
bind *:80
default_backend main-apache-sites
# Define hosts
acl host_discourse hdr(host) -i my-discourse-site.com
# figure out which one to use
use_backend discourse_docker if host_discourse
backend main-apache-sites
server server1 127.0.0.1:8080 cookie A check
backend discourse_docker
server server1 127.0.0.1:8888 cookie A check
```
---
### Author:  [@mac](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mac)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/4 "2015-06-03T15:29:28Z")
Sorry, didn’t see this until now.
The site stuff looks ok, but if you want to chroot you need to set the pid
and log to write into the chroot. Or comment out the chroot line. I will go
over it more closely when I get home later this afternoon.
---
### Author:  [@AstonJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AstonJ)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/5 "2015-06-03T16:01:09Z")
Thanks Mac.
Do you think I should just use the config as per the link you posted? (I just thought that as the post is a couple of years old the default config with the install might have been better/newer.)
---
### Author:  [@mac](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mac)
#### Post date: [June 3, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/6 "2015-06-03T16:49:37Z")
They go really slow as far as major version releases. Its entirely possible
that a config doesn’t have formatting or variable changes for a couple of
years. Are you playing with 1.5 or 1.6? I would keep your config, just
maybe comment out the chroot directive to make sure the site stuff works,
then double back to dial in the chroot pathing until that also works.
Shouldn’t be too bad.
---
### Author:  [@AstonJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AstonJ)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/anyone-have-any-experience-with-haproxy/29560/7 "2015-06-04T00:44:51Z")
Good news and bad news.
Good news is that Discourse seems to be working fine. Bad news is that all my other sites are broken. (Seems to be an issue with Virtualmin), I’ve reverted for now, will look more into it and try again tomorrow. Any ideas in the meantime would be appreciated!