HAProxy Administration Training Course

1. Overview of Load Balancing and Load Balancers

2. Introduction to HAProxy

1. Definition and scope of HAProxy
2. Operational mechanics of HAProxy
3. Core capabilities
   1. Proxying services
   2. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) termination
   3. Service monitoring
   4. High availability management
   5. Traffic distribution and load balancing
   6. Session persistence mechanisms
   7. Data sampling and transformation
   8. Mapping functionalities
   9. Access Control Lists (ACLs) and conditional logic
   10. Content-based switching
   11. Stick-table implementation
   12. Dynamic string formatting
   13. HTTP request rewriting and redirection
   14. Server resilience and protection
   15. Logging procedures
   16. Statistical reporting
4. Advanced functionalities
   1. Management interfaces
   2. Operating system-specific features
   3. Scripting support
5. Capacity planning and sizing guidelines for government systems
6. Acquisition and installation of HAProxy

3. Alternative Solutions to HAProxy

1. Nginx
2. Apache HTTP Server and other alternatives

4. Fundamental Concepts of HTTP

• The HTTP transaction lifecycle
• Structure of the HTTP request
• Request line syntax
• Request header fields
• Structure of the HTTP response
• Response line status codes
• Response header fields

5. HAProxy Configuration Methods

1. Syntax and structure of the configuration file
2. Character quoting and escaping protocols
3. Utilization of environment variables
4. Duration and time specification formats
5. Illustrative configuration examples for government deployments

6. Global Configuration Parameters

1. Process orchestration and security policies
2. Performance optimization techniques
3. Diagnostic and debugging tools
4. User list definitions
5. Peer synchronization configurations
6. Mailer notifications for alerts

7. Proxy Configuration

1. Reference matrix for proxy directives
2. Alphabetical reference of all supported keywords

8. Bind and Server Directives

1. Bind address and port options
2. Server and default-server parameter settings
3. Domain Name System (DNS) resolution for servers
4. Comprehensive directive overview
5. Resolver section definitions

9. HTTP Header Manipulation Techniques

10. Implementation of ACLs and Sample Fetching

1. Fundamental ACL rules
2. Boolean value matching
3. Integer value matching
4. String value matching
5. Regular expression (regex) matching
6. Binary data block matching
7. IPv4 and IPv6 address matching
8. Utilizing ACLs to establish conditional routing rules
9. Fetching data samples
10. Data conversion techniques
11. Extracting samples from internal state variables
12. Layer 4 network sample extraction
13. Layer 5 transport layer sample extraction
14. Layer 6 presentation layer buffer content extraction
15. Layer 7 HTTP application layer sample extraction
16. Pre-defined ACL sets

11. Logging Framework

1. Log severity levels
2. Log format standards
3. Default log structure
4. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) log formatting
5. HTTP log formatting standards
6. Custom log format definitions
7. Error-specific log formatting
8. Advanced logging configurations
9. Suppressing logs for external health checks
10. Logging prior to session termination
11. Elevating log levels during error events
12. Suppressing logs for successful connection establishments
13. Event timestamping mechanisms
14. Session status reporting at disconnection
15. Handling non-printable characters in logs
16. HTTP cookie capture capabilities
17. HTTP header field capture
18. Sample log outputs for government review

12. Supported Data Filters

1. Tracing functionality
2. HTTP compression filters
3. Stream Processing Offload Engine (SPOE)
4. Content caching mechanisms
5. Cache configuration limitations and setup
6. Proxy section filter application