HAProxy connection limits and queues can help protect your servers and boost throughput when load balancing heavy amounts of traffic. When you use HAProxy as an API gateway in front of your services, it has the ability to protect those servers from traffic spikes. By utilizing connection limits and queues, you can ensure traffic flows through your network at an even pace.

We’ve released version 1.5 of the HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller. This version unlocks access to the raw HAProxy configuration language for power users to gain more control. You can also enable mutual TLS authentication between the ingress controller and services, enforce Basic authentication, and return custom error pages to users.

The HAProxy Data Plane API 2.2 lays the foundation for first-class service discovery and introduces native support for Consul. It also adds storage and file handling for SSL certificates, Map files, and SPOE configuration files.

With HAProxy, you can implement a circuit breaker to protect services from widespread failure. Martin Fowler, who is famous for being one of the Gang of Four authors who wrote Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, hosts a website where he catalogues software design patterns. He defines the Circuit Breaker pattern like this: The basic idea behind the circuit breaker is very simple. You wrap a protected function call in a circuit breaker object, which monitors for failures.