HAProxy is a powerful open-source load balancer and proxy server that plays a crucial role in ensuring high availability, scalability, and security for web applications and services.

By distributing incoming traffic across multiple servers, HAProxy prevents overload, enhances performance, and ensures uninterrupted service even if individual servers fail.

Learning HAProxy can equip you with valuable skills for managing and optimizing web infrastructure, making you a sought-after professional in the field of DevOps and system administration.

Finding a comprehensive and beginner-friendly HAProxy course can be challenging, especially with the abundance of options available online.

You’re likely seeking a course that provides a solid foundation in HAProxy’s core concepts, configuration, and practical applications, without overwhelming you with unnecessary complexity.

Based on our analysis, HAProxy for Beginners is the best course overall on Udemy for learning HAProxy.

This course offers a clear and concise introduction to HAProxy, covering its fundamental features, configuration options, and practical use cases.

It’s an ideal starting point for anyone new to load balancing or looking to gain a solid understanding of HAProxy.

However, if you’re looking for more specialized courses or advanced topics, don’t worry!

We have curated a list of other excellent HAProxy courses on Udemy that cater to different learning needs and skill levels.

Keep reading to explore more options and find the perfect HAProxy course to enhance your expertise.

HAProxy for Beginners

HAProxy for Beginners

This HAProxy for Beginners course covers everything you need to start your journey with this powerful load balancer.

You will begin by building a solid foundation, understanding what HAProxy is, its purpose, and the various tasks it can handle.

The course then guides you to more complex concepts such as configuring HAProxy.

This includes learning about different scheduling algorithms, setting up sticky sessions, and creating access lists for enhanced security.

The course explains how to use protocols like HTTP and TCP, and how to leverage the ForwardFor option to control traffic flow and bolster security measures.

This knowledge will equip you to efficiently manage server resources, boost your website’s performance, and ensure its constant availability for your users.

You will also learn about essential security features such as SSL termination.

You’ll understand how to avoid single points of failure in your setup, which is critical for maintaining a reliable web infrastructure.

Finally, you will become familiar with HAProxy’s built-in statistics and monitoring tools, enabling you to keep track of performance and make necessary optimizations.

Become HAProxy Load Balancer Expert - Using Ansible Playbook

Become HAProxy Load Balancer Expert - Using Ansible Playbook

This course will turn you into an HAProxy expert.

You’ll learn about load balancing and why HAProxy is a popular choice.

You’ll understand HAProxy’s design, how its parts work together, and its four main configuration sections.

You will install and set up HAProxy on Ubuntu and CentOS, learning from package installations and building from source.

This course also teaches you to use Ansible, which helps you automate setting up HAProxy.

You’ll use Ansible Playbooks to create HAProxy virtual machines, install needed software, and even build a group of HAProxy servers that work together.

You’ll become comfortable with important Ansible ideas like playbooks, tasks, and roles.

You’ll be able to protect your HAProxy setup from attacks like DDOS and Slowloris.

You’ll learn techniques like limiting connection attempts and blocking unwanted content.

You’ll also know how to make your HAProxy setup highly available using KeepAlived and Monit, which help keep your system running even if one part fails.

The course dives into HAProxy’s load balancing algorithms, like Round Robin, Least Connection, and Source IP Address Hashed, and how each distributes traffic differently.

You’ll also discover how to use HAProxy with SSL for secure connections and implement health checks to ensure your services are up and running.

You’ll learn advanced HAProxy configurations for gRPC, HTTP/2, and content switching using ACLs.

The course even covers how to interact with HAProxy programmatically using its API.

You’ll learn how to use tools like ELK, Zabbix, and Grafana to check on your HAProxy setup, making sure everything runs smoothly.

These tools provide insights into HAProxy’s performance metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption, disk activity, and traffic patterns.

You’ll become skilled at analyzing these metrics and using this information to optimize your HAProxy setup for top performance.

Master Load Balancing with HAProxy

Master Load Balancing with HAProxy

This course begins with the fundamentals of load balancing and HAProxy’s role in achieving it.

You dive into setting up your environment, configuring servers, and installing HAProxy.

You then master HAProxy’s configuration sections, preparing Apache servers, and implementing basic configurations.

You then explore various load balancing algorithms, empowering you to select the most effective method for your needs.

You learn about SELinux, TCP mode, and the HAProxy stat page, gaining the knowledge to monitor and analyze your load balancer’s performance.

You’ll master logging techniques and the use of ACLs to control traffic flow.

The course includes hands-on labs where you will work through scenarios like setting up lab environments, fixing database issues, and configuring persistence.

You learn about server failure detection, implement health checks to ensure system reliability, and utilize HAProxy’s command-line interface and API for interaction.

You are introduced to high availability concepts, including Keepalived and VRRP, and understand their roles in maintaining continuous service.

Finally, you gain expertise in securing your load balancer using TLS and SSL.

You will learn about SSL termination, certificate generation, and fine-tuning SSL settings.

You discover how to set up a certificate authority, enable SSL for applications, and explore SSL re-encryption and passthrough.

The course concludes by introducing you to automation using Ansible, enabling you to streamline your HAProxy deployment and configuration for increased efficiency.

[DevOps] Ansible by doing: HAproxy+Nginx - 2024

[DevOps] Ansible by doing: HAproxy+Nginx - 2024

This Ansible course will teach you how to use Ansible to build a system with no downtime, using HAProxy load balancing and the Nginx web server, both on your own computers and in the cloud using AWS.

You start by installing Ansible on your Linux system.

Then you learn how to make an inventory file, which is like a list of all the computers Ansible will manage, both on your network and in AWS.

Next, you dive into the core of Ansible: playbooks.

Imagine playbooks as instructions telling Ansible exactly what to do.

You learn how to make these playbooks smart by using “if” statements (conditions) and variables, making your automation adaptable.

You then graduate to building roles, which are like reusable blocks of Ansible code, making your projects organized and efficient.

This sets you up to learn about Ansible templates, allowing you to create flexible configuration files, particularly for your load balancer.

Finally, you apply everything you’ve learned to build a complete role for your HAProxy load balancer.

This role will be ready to deploy, meaning you can use it to manage real-world traffic.

You wrap up by learning about the most useful Ansible modules, which are like tools in your Ansible toolbox, and discover the best practices to ensure your automation is efficient and reliable.