Concepts

Let's take our example from the overview again:

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

Architecture

Let's zoom on Træfɪk and have an overview of its internal architecture:

Architecture

Entrypoints

Entrypoints are the network entry points into Træfɪk. They can be defined using:

Here is an example of entrypoints definition:

[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
    [entryPoints.http.redirect]
    entryPoint = "https"
  [entryPoints.https]
  address = ":443"
    [entryPoints.https.tls]
      [[entryPoints.https.tls.certificates]]
      certFile = "tests/traefik.crt"
      keyFile = "tests/traefik.key"

And here is another example with client certificate authentication:

[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.https]
  address = ":443"
  [entryPoints.https.tls]
  clientCAFiles = ["tests/clientca1.crt", "tests/clientca2.crt"]
    [[entryPoints.https.tls.certificates]]
    certFile = "tests/traefik.crt"
    keyFile = "tests/traefik.key"

Frontends

A frontend is a set of rules that forwards the incoming traffic from an entrypoint to a backend. Frontends can be defined using the following rules:

You can use multiple rules by separating them by ;

You can optionally enable passHostHeader to forward client Host header to the backend.

Here is an example of frontends definition:

[frontends]
  [frontends.frontend1]
  backend = "backend2"
    [frontends.frontend1.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:test.localhost,test2.localhost"
  [frontends.frontend2]
  backend = "backend1"
  passHostHeader = true
  priority = 10
  entrypoints = ["https"] # overrides defaultEntryPoints
    [frontends.frontend2.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:localhost,{subdomain:[a-z]+}.localhost"
  [frontends.frontend3]
  backend = "backend2"
    [frontends.frontend3.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:test3.localhost;Path:/test"

Combining multiple rules

As seen in the previous example, you can combine multiple rules. In TOML file, you can use multiple routes:

  [frontends.frontend3]
  backend = "backend2"
    [frontends.frontend3.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:test3.localhost"
    [frontends.frontend3.routes.test_2]
    rule = "Path:/test"

Here frontend3 will forward the traffic to the backend2 if the rules Host:test3.localhost AND Path:/test are matched. You can also use the notation using a ; separator, same result:

  [frontends.frontend3]
  backend = "backend2"
    [frontends.frontend3.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:test3.localhost;Path:/test"

Finally, you can create a rule to bind multiple domains or Path to a frontend, using the , separator:

 [frontends.frontend2]
    [frontends.frontend2.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Host:test1.localhost,test2.localhost"
  [frontends.frontend3]
  backend = "backend2"
    [frontends.frontend3.routes.test_1]
    rule = "Path:/test1,/test2"

Priorities

By default, routes will be sorted (in descending order) using rules length (to avoid path overlap): PathPrefix:/12345 will be matched before PathPrefix:/1234 that will be matched before PathPrefix:/1.

You can customize priority by frontend:

  [frontends]
    [frontends.frontend1]
    backend = "backend1"
    priority = 10
    passHostHeader = true
      [frontends.frontend1.routes.test_1]
      rule = "PathPrefix:/to"
    [frontends.frontend2]
    priority = 5
    backend = "backend2"
    passHostHeader = true
      [frontends.frontend2.routes.test_1]
      rule = "PathPrefix:/toto"

Here, frontend1 will be matched before frontend2 (10 > 5).

Backends

A backend is responsible to load-balance the traffic coming from one or more frontends to a set of http servers. Various methods of load-balancing is supported:

A circuit breaker can also be applied to a backend, preventing high loads on failing servers. Initial state is Standby. CB observes the statistics and does not modify the request. In case if condition matches, CB enters Tripped state, where it responds with predefines code or redirects to another frontend. Once Tripped timer expires, CB enters Recovering state and resets all stats. In case if the condition does not match and recovery timer expires, CB enters Standby state.

It can be configured using:

For example:

To proactively prevent backends from being overwhelmed with high load, a maximum connection limit can also be applied to each backend.

Maximum connections can be configured by specifying an integer value for maxconn.amount and maxconn.extractorfunc which is a strategy used to determine how to categorize requests in order to evaluate the maximum connections.

For example:

[backends]
  [backends.backend1]
    [backends.backend1.maxconn]
       amount = 10
       extractorfunc = "request.host"

Sticky sessions are supported with both load balancers. When sticky sessions are enabled, a cookie called _TRAEFIK_BACKEND is set on the initial request. On subsequent requests, the client will be directed to the backend stored in the cookie if it is still healthy. If not, a new backend will be assigned.

For example:

[backends]
  [backends.backend1]
    [backends.backend1.loadbalancer]
      sticky = true

Servers

Servers are simply defined using a URL. You can also apply a custom weight to each server (this will be used by load-balancing).

Here is an example of backends and servers definition:

[backends]
  [backends.backend1]
    [backends.backend1.circuitbreaker]
      expression = "NetworkErrorRatio() > 0.5"
    [backends.backend1.servers.server1]
    url = "http://172.17.0.2:80"
    weight = 10
    [backends.backend1.servers.server2]
    url = "http://172.17.0.3:80"
    weight = 1
  [backends.backend2]
    [backends.backend2.LoadBalancer]
      method = "drr"
    [backends.backend2.servers.server1]
    url = "http://172.17.0.4:80"
    weight = 1
    [backends.backend2.servers.server2]
    url = "http://172.17.0.5:80"
    weight = 2

Configuration

Træfɪk's configuration has two parts:

Static Træfɪk configuration

The static configuration is the global configuration which setting up connections to configuration backends and entrypoints.

Træfɪk can be configured using many configuration sources with the following precedence order. Each item takes precedence over the item below it:

It means that arguments overrides configuration file, and Key-value Store overrides arguments.

Configuration file

By default, Træfɪk will try to find a traefik.toml in the following places:

You can override this by setting a configFile argument:

$ traefik --configFile=foo/bar/myconfigfile.toml

Please refer to the global configuration section to get documentation on it.

Arguments

Each argument (and command) is described in the help section:

$ traefik --help

Note that all default values will be displayed as well.

Key-value stores

Træfɪk supports several Key-value stores:

Please refer to the User Guide Key-value store configuration section to get documentation on it.

Dynamic Træfɪk configuration

The dynamic configuration concerns :

Træfɪk can hot-reload those rules which could be provided by multiple configuration backends.

We only need to enable watch option to make Træfɪk watch configuration backend changes and generate its configuration automatically. Routes to services will be created and updated instantly at any changes.

Please refer to the configuration backends section to get documentation on it.

Commands

Usage: traefik [command] [--flag=flag_argument]

List of Træfɪk available commands with description :                                                             

Each command may have related flags. All those related flags will be displayed with :

$ traefik [command] --help

Note that each command is described at the begining of the help section:

$ traefik --help