traefik/docs/index.md

Træfɪk is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer made to deploy microservices with ease. It supports several backends (Docker, Swarm, Mesos/Marathon, Consul, Etcd, Zookeeper, BoltDB, Rest API, file...) to manage its configuration automatically and dynamically.

Overview

Imagine that you have deployed a bunch of microservices on your infrastructure. You probably used a service registry (like etcd or consul) and/or an orchestrator (swarm, Mesos/Marathon) to manage all these services. If you want your users to access some of your microservices from the Internet, you will have to use a reverse proxy and configure it using virtual hosts or prefix paths:

• domain api.domain.com will point the microservice api in your private network
• path domain.com/web will point the microservice web in your private network
• domain backoffice.domain.com will point the microservices backoffice in your private network, load-balancing between your multiple instances

But a microservices architecture is dynamic... Services are added, removed, killed or upgraded often, eventually several times a day.

Traditional reverse-proxies are not natively dynamic. You can't change their configuration and hot-reload easily.

Here enters Træfɪk.

Træfɪk can listen to your service registry/orchestrator API, and knows each time a microservice is added, removed, killed or upgraded, and can generate its configuration automatically. Routes to your services will be created instantly.

Run it and forget it!

Quickstart

You can have a quick look at Træfɪk in this Katacoda tutorial that shows how to load balance requests between multiple Docker containers.

Here is a talk (in french) given by Emile Vauge at the Devoxx France 2016 conference. You will learn fundamental Træfɪk features and see some demos with Docker, Mesos/Marathon and Lets'Encrypt.

Get it

Binary

You can grab the latest binary from the releases page and just run it with the sample configuration file:

./traefik -c traefik.toml

Docker

Using the tiny Docker image:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -p 80:80 -v $PWD/traefik.toml:/etc/traefik/traefik.toml traefik

Test it

You can test Træfɪk easily using Docker compose, with this docker-compose.yml file:

traefik:
  image: traefik
  command: --web --docker --docker.domain=docker.localhost --logLevel=DEBUG
  ports:
    - "80:80"
    - "8080:8080"
  volumes:
    - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    - /dev/null:/traefik.toml

whoami1:
  image: emilevauge/whoami
  labels:
    - "traefik.backend=whoami"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:whoami.docker.localhost"

whoami2:
  image: emilevauge/whoami
  labels:
    - "traefik.backend=whoami"
    - "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:whoami.docker.localhost"

Then, start it:

docker-compose up -d

Finally, test load-balancing between the two servers whoami1 and whoami2:

$ curl -H Host:whoami.docker.localhost http://127.0.0.1
Hostname: ef194d07634a
IP: 127.0.0.1
IP: ::1
IP: 172.17.0.4
IP: fe80::42:acff:fe11:4
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: 172.17.0.4:80
User-Agent: curl/7.35.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip
X-Forwarded-For: 172.17.0.1
X-Forwarded-Host: 172.17.0.4:80
X-Forwarded-Proto: http
X-Forwarded-Server: dbb60406010d

$ curl -H Host:whoami.docker.localhost http://127.0.0.1
Hostname: 6c3c5df0c79a
IP: 127.0.0.1
IP: ::1
IP: 172.17.0.3
IP: fe80::42:acff:fe11:3
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: 172.17.0.3:80
User-Agent: curl/7.35.0
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip
X-Forwarded-For: 172.17.0.1
X-Forwarded-Host: 172.17.0.3:80
X-Forwarded-Proto: http
X-Forwarded-Server: dbb60406010d