HAProxy vs. Nginx

Question

I was looking at using HAProxy and Nginx for load balancing, and I had some questions:

• Should I use JUST HAProxy over Nginx for the proxy server?
• Is there

Answer 1

NGINX next to HAProxy looks like a 2CV next to a Tesla...

Benefits HAProxy:

• Provides a comprehensive list of 61 different metrics. See section 9 for a full list of available statistics

• The status page is much more detailed and user-friendly as compared to Nginx’s

• Easily able to integrate with third-party monitoring services (e.g. Datadog)
• IPV6, PROXY PROTOCOL, TRANSPARENT PROXY, SSL & SNI, HTTP2, API, LUA Scripting, RDP connection broker, Stick tables, multi-node session replication, DDOS & DOS protection...

Drawbacks HAProxy:

• Does not provide other features that Nginx offers such as web server capabilities

Benefits Nginx:

• Since Nginx is capable of doing much more than load balancing it is a much more versatile solution
• Useful if you require a load balancer as well as a web server with advanced caching ability, and more
• There is a community-developed module for greater statistic gathering than what is offered by default

Drawbacks Nginx:

• Only provides 7 stat metrics which represent all sites on the server. There is no individual, per-site metrics available
• The status page is not user-friendly nor does it provide many details
• Very limited third-party monitoring integration possibilities