HAProxyConf Workshops
Enhance your HAProxy skills with our in-depth workshops, held on June 3rd at the Luma Hotel in San Francisco. Ticket holders receive purchase preference, and spots are limited, so register early! Each workshop package is priced at $100.
From Beginner to Advanced: Understanding and Using HAProxy
HAProxy 101: Fundamentals, Configurations, Routing, and Beyond
This workshop provides a comprehensive introduction to HAProxy, the reliable, high-performance load balancer. Participants will gain hands-on experience with HAProxy’s architecture and configuration, learning to implement robust load balancing solutions for modern applications.
We begin with an Overview of HAProxy’s configuration file structure, examining how different sections interact to create a complete load balancing solution. The workshop then explores Global settings that define process-level directives essential for HAProxy’s operation, followed by Defaults sections that establish inheritable baseline configurations to streamline setup.
Participants will learn to configure Frontends that accept incoming connections and Backends that define server pools for routing requests. The workshop delves into advanced traffic control using ACLs (Access Control Lists), teaching attendees how to create conditional rules that intelligently route and transform traffic based on various criteria. Complementing ACLs, Fetch methods extract critical information from requests, while Converters transform these values into usable formats for decision-making.
For data persistence and pattern matching, we’ll explore Map files that associate keys with values, significantly simplifying complex configurations. Stick tables will be introduced as powerful tools for storing session data and statistics as traffic flows through the load balancer. Finally, the workshop covers Variables, demonstrating how to store and manipulate data during request processing for dynamic configuration adjustments.
By the conclusion, participants will possess the knowledge to implement sophisticated HAProxy configurations that ensure high availability, optimal performance, and intelligent traffic management for their applications.
Nick Ramirez
Director of Documentation
Ashley Morris
Technical Writer
HAProxy 102: Enterprise-grade load balancing mastery — from deployment to automation
This advanced workshop builds upon foundational HAProxy knowledge, elevating participants’ expertise to implement enterprise-grade load balancing solutions across diverse environments. HAProxy 102 focuses on deployment flexibility, advanced observability, seamless management, and modern automation techniques.
We begin with Any Form Factor deployment strategies, demonstrating how HAProxy works effectively across cloud images, virtual machines, bare-metal servers, containerized deployments, and more. Participants will learn the nuances of each implementation method and optimization tips for specific deployment scenarios. We’ll thoroughly cover Advanced Logging Concepts, introducing sophisticated techniques for monitoring and troubleshooting at scale. We’ll discuss logging profiles that enable targeted debugging, sampling methods to manage log volumes in high-traffic environments, and modern structured logging formats — including CBOR and JSON for enhanced integration with modern observability stacks.
Next, our Lifecycle Management section demonstrates methods for achieving zero-downtime upgrades. You’ll learn how to seamlessly transition between HAProxy versions without service interruptions using socket transfer, hitless reloads, and state synchronization between instances.
Finally, we’ll dive deeply into Automation capabilities to transform manual operations into programmatic workflows. We’ll examine HAProxy Runtime API for dynamic configuration adjustments, Data Plane API for RESTful management, and HAProxy Fusion Control Plane for centralized management of massive-scale HAProxy Enterprise deployments.
Through practical exercises and real-world scenarios, participants will learn the advanced skills needed to implement HAProxy as a mission-critical component within modern infrastructures. You’ll gain the ability to design, deploy, and maintain sophisticated HAProxy configurations with unmatched performance, reliability, and efficiency.
Nathan Wehrman
Sr. Systems Engineer
Harnessing Next-Gen Security, Encryption, and More
Mastering TLS with HAProxy: From Configuration to Deep Security Controls
Join us for an advanced hands-on workshop focused on Transport Layer Security (TLS) in HAProxy. Designed for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and security professionals, this session dives deep into securing traffic and managing certificates with confidence.
We’ll start by exploring the various TLS configuration options available in HAProxy and guide you through creating and applying proper certificate bundles. You’ll learn how to retrieve and inspect TLS session attributes in real-time, and set up advanced TLS frontends to optimize both performance and security.
The workshop will cover client-side TLS configurations, followed by a comprehensive look at mutual TLS (mTLS) authentication—including how to set it up and effectively manage trusted certificates. We’ll also cover the process for revoking client certificates to maintain a secure environment.
Finally, we’ll explore how to decipher HTTPS traffic for debugging and compliance, using built-in HAProxy capabilities and external tools, all while maintaining best practices.
Whether you’re deploying HAProxy in a production environment or looking to enhance your TLS expertise, this session will provide you with the practical knowledge and confidence to implement robust, secure, and flexible TLS strategies.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your HAProxy skills and take control of your encrypted traffic.
Sebastien Gross
Senior System and Network Engineer
Securing Your Web Applications: Leveraging HAProxy Enterprise’s Global Profiling Engine for Advanced Threat Detection
This workshop is designed for those who already have a working knowledge of HAProxy configurations and want to learn more about advanced security. We will teach you how to use stick tables in combination with HAProxy Enterprise’s Global Profiling Engine to enhance your protection capabilities.
We’ll start with an overview of stick tables in HAProxy, including how to track and combine multiple identifiers. Then, we’ll demonstrate how to use stick tables to monitor the number and types of URLs or API keys a single IP or session identifier has accessed. This information alone can be used to identify clients that are exhibiting unusual behavior, but leveraging the Global Profiling Engine we can use that information even more effectively.
To do that we will cover what the Global Profiling Engine does and show how it can be used to gather information from multiple HAProxy Enterprise servers across multiple data centers to provide real-time intelligence about clients even if they move between regions.
We will then show how the Global Profiling Engine will combine all of that information into statistics over various time periods. These statistics can be used to compare current requests against past activity and make decisions based on how a client’s behavior differs from others to identify anomalies and react appropriately.
With multiple examples you will then be prepared to adapt and deploy these strategies in the field to reduce resource consumption and fend off attacks quickly and accurately.
Chad Lavoie
Principal Solutions Architect