Last resort backend

Help!
1

Is it possible to define a backend that can be used by all other backend as its last resort.

Ie normal backends will have 2 servers defined, if both those servers are down or then uses the last resort backend.

I know there is the backup flag that can be set per server in the backend config, but that does mean defining it in every backend.

Cheers
Simon

2

You could use the following “trick”:

  • in your frontend I assume you have some ACL’s that are used to route the requests to various backends as such use_backend service_1 if route_1;
  • now there is a sample nbsrv ( http://cbonte.github.io/haproxy-dconv/1.8/configuration.html#7.3.2-nbsrv ) that returns the number of live servers;
  • you could create a special ACL for the case when no servers are available as acl service_1_down nbsrv(service_1) eq 0;
  • then you could insert a new routing rule in the frontent that uses the newly introduced ACL; (however you need to define one backend which contains the fallback server;)
  • (BTW, I always include a default_fallback rule in my frontends, and I always have such a fallback backend even if I have so live servers declared so I can handle such situations more easily;)

Thus tu summarize:

frontend main
    acl route_1 ...
    acl service_1_down nbsrv(service_1) eq 0
    use_backend fallback if route_1 service_1_down
    use_backend service_1 if route_1
    default_backend fallback

backend service_1
   ...

backend fallback
   ...
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