traefik/docs/index.md

Træfik (pronounced like traffic) 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, Amazon ECS, Amazon DynamoDB, 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 Træfik.

Træfik 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 Træfik in this Katacoda tutorial that shows how to load balance requests between multiple Docker containers.

Here is a talk given by Emile Vauge at GopherCon 2017. You will learn Træfik basics in less than 10 minutes.

Here is a talk given by Ed Robinson at ContainerCamp UK conference. You will learn fundamental Træfik features and see some demos with Kubernetes.

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 Træfik easily using Docker compose, with this docker-compose.yml file in a folder named traefik:

version: '2'

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

networks:
  webgateway:
    driver: bridge

Start it from within the traefik folder:

docker-compose up -d

In a browser you may open http://localhost:8080 to access Træfik's dashboard and observe the following magic.

Now, create a folder named test and create a docker-compose.yml in it with this content:

version: '2'

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

networks:
  web:
    external:
      name: traefik_webgateway

Then, start and scale it in the test folder:

docker-compose up -d
docker-compose scale whoami=2

Finally, test load-balancing between the two services test_whoami_1 and test_whoami_2:

$ 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