Haproxy TCP/HTTP Load Balancer

HAProxy

HAProxy is a reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

SKUDONET

SKUDONET® began its public release in October 2010, and we have not stopped refining security, scalability, and high availability technology ever since.

HAProxy’s Strengths

• HAProxy, as an open-source solution, it offers extensive flexibility for customizing configurations and scripts according to each company’s needs, making it ideal for administrators with technical expertise.
• While it supports scaling in moderate to large environments, its scalability often requires manual adjustments and advanced cluster configurations.
• Optimized for reduced resource usage, it provides low latency and can handle over 1 million concurrent connections, which is crucial for high-performance applications.
• It integrates SSL/TLS Offloading, allowing encryption processing to occur at the load balancer level, improving backend server performance in secure environments.
• Provides advanced tools for real-time traffic monitoring, helping to identify and manage usage patterns and potential issues, enabling proactive responses.
• HAProxy’s modular structure allows for the development of custom plugins, adding additional functions that cater to the specific needs of each infrastructure, expanding its functionality.

SKUDONET’s Strengths

• Disruptive vision with a stable growth as challengers in the ADC market, with an agile team and engaged community.
• Innovation driven with Open Source technology with no vendor lock-in, SKUDONET integrates broadly across platforms, supporting hardware, virtualization, bare metal, and cloud environments, with compatibility for major hypervisors and virtual disk formats.
• Very high cost-effective solutions that offers enterprise-grade features without product or service limitations, making it suitable for midsize to large enterprises.
• Investment in R&D to deliver a technology driven by easiness, performance and security.
• Is a complete ADC (Application Delivery Controller) with multi-protocol support that could manage all kinds of network protocols (UDP, TCP, HTTP/S, SCTP, SIP, T/FTP, WebSockets) simultaneously, with multiport capabilities to handle complex network requirements; and it’s not oriented to licensed features.
• Its operating system, built on Debian 12.5 LTS, is fully optimized for network performance. It can handle over 140,000 concurrent users at layer 7 and more than 10 million users at layer 4 with only 2 dedicated cores, thanks to a tuned kernel that includes the latest security and performance patches.
• Ability to create configuration backups, simplified cluster configuration and replication. Enables automatic replication between nodes with a stateful cluster setup, allowing seamless failover without connection loss.
• Provides an integrated IPDS security system with advanced security with WAF, real-time blacklists, DDoS protection, and access control lists to defend against common network threats.
• Provides a very user-friendly and accessible graphical interfacee designed for operators and network engineers, with enhanced log visualization and accessibility (including support for colorblind users).
• Automation capabilities thanks to it’s fully programmable REST+JSON API facilitates seamless integration within automated infrastructure environments.

HAProxy’s Weaknesses

• Limitations in multi-protocol management: HAProxy is focused on basic protocols like TCP, HTTP, and HTTPS.
• Less automated scalability: While HAProxy allows scaling in medium to large environments, scalability may require manual adjustments and advanced configurations, which can be challenging for some users.
• No integrated graphical interface: HAProxy is mainly configured through text files, which may make administration more difficult for some users.
• Limited security without native WAF: HAProxy does not offer an integrated WAF by default, so advanced security requires external configurations or additional tools.
• Lower accessibility and dedicated technical support: Although HAProxy has an active open-source community, it lacks dedicated support with 24/7 options like those offered by SKUDONET.
• No custom kernel optimization: HAProxy does not include a kernel specifically tuned for network performance.

SKUDONET’s Weaknesses

•  Young brand as an open source company and yet to develop a big influence than other more established vendors.
•  Needs to develop a broader partnership network.