What is Traefik?
Traefik is a modern reverse proxy solution written in GO to meet modern containerized challenges.Unlike a traditional reverse proxy, which requires manual configuration, Traefik uses service discovery to dynamically configure routing. Traefik supports all major protocols, leveraging a rich set of middleware for load balancing, rate-limiting, circuit-breakers, mirroring, authentication, and more. Traefik also supports SSL termination and works with ACME providers (like Let’s Encrypt) for automatic certificate generation. Source.Traefik was developed with containerized technology in mind, which means there’s a lot of new features available in comparison with other reverse proxy solutions. When running, Traefik does the following and more:
- Dynamically updates the configuration and loads it without a restart.
- Load balances requests from the outside world using multiple available algorithms.
- Enables HTTPS for microservices using Let’s Encrypt.
- Provides a clean web UI.
- Supports for WebSocket, HTTP/2, GRPC.
- Provides metrics to Rest, Prometheus, Datadog, Statsd, InfluxDB.
Why Use Traefik as a Reverse Proxy for Multiple Hosts?
Say, for example, you want to remove one of the microservices from the container or change its port, and, as a result, you have to edit the Nginx configuration file to reflect the new container settings. Now, consider another situation where you add, delete, or scale the microservices application several times in a day—now, you’re editing the routes and other settings several times in the reverse proxy configuration file. In this article, we will check how to install Traefik and configure it in a standalone and Dockerized environment, and then give examples of connecting it to your microservices in the backend.Prerequisites to Install Traefik
- A VPS running Ubuntu 24.04. Get your Linux VPS hosting from a reputable and trustworthy provider like SSD Nodes. We offer powerful Ubuntu servers and the best deals. Take a look at our offerings and prepare for your mind to be blown 🤯.
- A non-root,
sudo-enabled user. If you only have arootuser, see our SSH tutorial for details on creating new users. - A working Docker installation—for information about how to install Docker, check out our getting started with Docker tutorial.
Using Traefik without Docker
Our first goal is to install Traefik and use it to route a few applications (backend) using Traefik configuration without Dockerizing them. To do that, we’ll install Apache and Nginx and configure them to use different ports, as they will act as a backend. First, update your system package index:$ sudo apt update$ sudo apt install apache2
8083 from 80 in /etc/apache2/ports.conf and restart Apache.
$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2
$ sudo apt install nginx$ sudo mkdir /var/www/nginx_html
$ sudo echo '<!DOCTYPE html><html><body><h1>Welcome to My Nginx Page</h1></body></html>' | sudo tee /var/www/nginx_html/index.html
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
/var/www/nginx_html directory, and the 8082 port number:
server {
listen 8082 default_server;
listen [::]:8082 default_server;
# ...
# ...
# ...
root /var/www/nginx_html;
# ...
# ...
# ...
}
$ sudo systemctl restart nginx8083 and 8082, respectively.
Step 1: Install Traefik
To install Traefik as a standalone environment, we need to download the binary and edit the Traefik configuration file and rules files. Download the Traefik binary from the releases page:$ wget https://github.com/traefik/traefik/releases/download/v3.1.4/traefik_v3.1.4_linux_amd64.tar.gz
v3.1.4 with the latest release, or another binary that is compatible with your system.
Check the integrity of the downloaded file and compare it to the value in the traefik_v3.1.4_checksums.txt file:
$ sha256sum ./traefik_v3.1.4_linux_amd64.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf traefik_v3.1.4_linux_amd64.tar.gz
./traefik to run Traefik configurations.
Step 2: Traefik Configuration
To host multiple websites with Traefik, you’ll need to create a configuration file that routes each domain to the corresponding port. First, we’ll create atraefik.yml file that gets automatically detected by Traefik:
log:
level: "DEBUG"
entryPoints:
web:
address: ":80"
providers:
file:
filename: "./rules.yml"
watch: true
traefik.yml file, you have the following:
log: Sets log level toDEBUGfor detailed output.entryPoints: Defineswebentry point to listen on port80for HTTP traffic.providers: This tells Traefik to load dynamic configuration (such as routes and services) from therules.ymlfile, and watch for changes.
Step 3: Set up Traefik Rules
Next, create arules.yml file to define dynamic routing rules:
http:
routers:
router1:
rule: "Host(`nginx.example.com`)"
service: service1
entryPoints:
- web
router2:
rule: "Host(`apache.example.com`)"
service: service2
entryPoints:
- web
services:
service1:
loadBalancer:
servers:
- url: "http://127.0.0.1:8082"
service2:
loadBalancer:
servers:
- url: "http://127.0.0.1:8083"
routers to define traffic rules and route them to services:
router1: Routes traffic requests fornginx.example.comtoservice1.router2: Routes traffic requests forapache.example.comtoservice2.
service1: Forwards traffic to the Nginx server at
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