In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure HAProxy on Ubuntu 20.04, one of the most popular operating systems in the world.

Prerequisites

• 3 Ubuntu 20.04 VPS, one for HAProxy and we will use the other two as the webservers.
• SSH root access or a normal SSH user with sudo privileges.

Step 1. Login and Update the System

Log in to your Ubuntu 20.04 VPS as a root user or as a regular user with sudo privileges. In this tutorial, we will use a sudoer user called ‘master’.

ssh master@IP_Address -p Port_number

Do not forget to replace “master” with a user that has sudo privileges, or root. Additionally, replace “IP_Address” and “Port_Number” with your server’s IP address and SSH port.

Run this command to check whether you have the proper Ubuntu version installed on your server:

$ lsb_release -a

You should see this output:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

Now, run the following command to update all installed packages to the latest available version.

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Install HAProxy

HAProxy is available on the default Ubuntu 20.04 repository. However, the available package is not the most recent stable version. Let’s check the HAProxy version if we want to install it from Ubuntu 20.04 repository.

$ sudo apt show haproxy

You can check the latest stable version at http://www.haproxy.org/#down. In this article, we are going to install HAPproxy 2.5, let’s run the following command to proceed with the installation.

$ sudo apt install software-properties-common

The software-properties-common package is probably already installed on your server, but there will be no issue if you run this command again.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vbernat/haproxy-2.5

This command puts the Personal Package Archive (PPA) into the list of apt sources. After adding the PPA to our APT source list, we can run the command below to complete the installation. You can replace the version number in the command above if you want to use another version of HAProxy.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install haproxy

Once installed, we can check the version by running this command:

$ sudo haproxy -v

You should see this output:

HAProxy version 2.5.0-1ppa1~focal 2021/11/26 - https://haproxy.org/
Status: stable branch - will stop receiving fixes around Q1 2023.
Known bugs: http://www.haproxy.org/bugs/bugs-2.5.0.html
Running on: Linux 5.4.0-91-generic #102-Ubuntu SMP Fri Nov 5 16:31:28 UTC 2021 x86_64

Step 3. Configure HAProxy

By default, HAProxy is not configured to listen on a port number. In this step, since we are going to configure it as a reverse proxy and load balancer, we are going to make changes to the default HAProxy configuration.

$ sudo cp -a /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg{,.orig}

The command above will copy the file /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg to /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg.orig

Now. let’s edit the file.

$ sudo nano /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg

And append these lines:

frontend haproxy-main
    bind *:80
    option forwardfor  
    default_backend apache_webservers    

backend apache_webservers
    balance roundrobin
    server websvr1	10.0.0.10:80 check
    server websvr2	10.0.0.20:80 check

Make sure to replace 10.0.0.10 and 10.0.0.20 with your actual webserver IP addresses. Save the file then exit.

Now, log in to your other two servers and install apache on the servers then create a default index file by running these commands.

$ sudo apt update; sudo apt install apache2 -y

On websvr1, run this command:

echo "<H1>Apache on backend server 1 is running </H1>" |sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

On websvr2, run this command:

echo "<H1>Apache on backend server 2 is running </H1>" |sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

Save the files then exit.

On your HAProxy server, restart the service:

$ sudo systemctl restart haproxy

The HAProxy server is now ready to accept and distribute the workload across the two apache servers. You can verify this by invoking a one-liner command in your HAProxy server.

$ while true; do curl localhost; sleep 1; done

As seen in the picture, the website is loaded both from websvr1 and websvr2.

If you want to see the statistics and see the information through the GUI, we can configure HAProxy and enable the monitoring function.

Open HAProxy configuration file.

$ sudo nano /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg

Then append these lines.

listen stats
    bind :8800
    stats enable
    stats uri /
    stats hide-version
    stats auth rosehosting:m0d1fyth15
    default_backend apache_webservers

Pay attention to the stats auth part. This is where you specify the login name and password. Change the login name and password to a stronger password. Save the file, exit and restart HAProxy.

$ sudo systemctl restart haproxy

Now, you can navigate to http://YOUR_HAPROXY_IP_ADDRESS:8800 to see the statistics, you will be asked for the username and password you specified earlier in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg.

That’s it. You have successfully installed HAProxy on your Ubuntu VPS. For more information about HAProxy, please refer to the HAProxy website.

If you are one of our web hosting customers and use our optimized Linux Hosting, you don’t have to install HAProxy On Ubuntu 20.04 by yourself, our expert Linux admins will set up and configure HAProxy on your Ubuntu VPS, for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, on how to install HAProxy on Ubuntu 20.04, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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On the other hand, Ubuntu 20.04 feels more stable and easy to use, and as a result, users consider the operations running more smoothly, compared to some previous versions. Still, some users have issues while installing certain apps and software. Such is the case with Docker Compose.

In the following tutorial, we will show you how to install Docker Compose on Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Prerequisites

• A fresh Ubuntu 20.04 VPS.
• Access to the root user account (or access to an admin account with root privileges)

Step 1: Log in to the Server & Update the Server OS Packages

First, log in to your Ubuntu 20.04 server via SSH as the root user:

ssh root@IP_Address -p Port_number

You will need to replace ‘IP_Address‘ and ‘Port_number‘ with your server’s respective IP address and SSH port number. Additionally, replace ‘root‘ with the username of the admin account if necessary.

Before starting, you have to make sure that all Ubuntu 20.04 OS packages installed on the server are up to date. You can do this by running the following commands:

apt-get update -y

Step 2: Install  docker-compose on your server

By default, Docker Compose is available in the Ubuntu 20.04 default repository. You can install it with the following command:

apt-get install docker-compose

Once the Docker Compose is installed, verify the installed version with the following command:

docker-compose --version

You should get the following output:

docker-compose version 1.25.0, build unknown

This option will not guarantee that you downloading the latest docker-compose version.

On the GitHub repository, you will get the updates of Docker Compose, which might not be available on the standard Ubuntu repository. At the time of this writing this tutorial, the most current stable version is 1.29.2.

curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

This command saves the file in: /usr/local/bin directory, under the name docker-compose.

Next, you need to change the file permission, and making the downloaded file executable with the following command:

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

Once Docker Compose is installed, verify the installed version with the following command:

docker-compose --version

You should get the following output:

docker-compose version 1.29.2, build 5becea4c

Step 3: Test Docker Compose with Sample Container

Create a new directory for your sample container example:

mkdir test

Change directory that you just created:

cd test

From there, create a YAML configuration file:

nano docker-compose.yaml

And copy the following configuration into docker-compose.yaml file:

version: '3.3'
services:
   hello-world:
      image:
         hello-world:latest

Next, run the following command to pull the hello-world image on your system.

docker-compose up

The output should be similar to this:

Creating network "root_default" with the default driver
Pulling hello-world (hello-world:latest)...
latest: Pulling from library/hello-world
2db29710123e: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:9ade9cc2e26189a19c2e8854b9c8f1e14829b51c55a630ee675a5a9540ef6ccf
Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest
Creating root_hello-world_1 ... done
Attaching to root_hello-world_1
hello-world_1 |
hello-world_1 | Hello from Docker!
hello-world_1 | This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.
hello-world_1 |
hello-world_1 | To generate this message, Docker took the following steps:
hello-world_1 | 1. The Docker client contacted the Docker daemon.
hello-world_1 | 2. The Docker daemon pulled the "hello-world" image from the Docker Hub.
hello-world_1 | (amd64)
hello-world_1 | 3. The Docker daemon created a new container from that image which runs the
hello-world_1 | executable that produces the output you are currently reading.
hello-world_1 | 4. The Docker daemon streamed that output to the Docker client, which sent it
hello-world_1 | to your terminal.
hello-world_1 |
hello-world_1 | To try something more ambitious, you can run an Ubuntu container with:
hello-world_1 | $ docker run -it ubuntu bash
hello-world_1 |
hello-world_1 | Share images, automate workflows, and more with a free Docker ID:
hello-world_1 | https://hub.docker.com/
hello-world_1 |
hello-world_1 | For more examples and ideas, visit:
hello-world_1 | https://docs.docker.com/get-started/
hello-world_1 |
root_hello-world_1 exited with code 0

After downloading the image, Docker Compose creates a container and runs the hello-world program.

If you want to see the container information, you can use the following command:

docker ps -a

The output should be similar to this:

CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
31b0b7a2e9f0 hello-world:latest "/hello" 17 minutes ago Exited (0) 17 minutes ago root_hello-world_1

In this tutorial, we learned how to install Docker Compose on your Ubuntu 20.04 server, as well as the basics of how to use it.

Of course, you don’t need to do any of this if your server is covered by our Managed Linux Support services in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Docker Composer onto your Ubuntu 20.04 server for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons below, or simply leave a comment in the comment section. Thanks.

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