Traefik

Set up docker-compose file

Note: Don't name any service if you want to scale them.

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:alpine
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ${PWD}/traefik.toml:/etc/traefik/traefik.toml
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 8080:8080
  web:
    image: httpd
    restart: always

traefik.toml

defaultEntryPoints = ["http"]
logLevel = "INFO"
sendAnonymousUsage = true
[docker]
  endpoint = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
  exposedByDefault = true
# enabling api is not absolutely necessary, it is needed only if you need dashboard
[api]
dashboard = true
entrypoint = "dashboard"
[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
  [entryPoints.dashboard]
  address = ":8080"

Launch the containers

docker-compose up -d

Inspect Traefik dashboard

Go to localhost:8080

The Traefik dashboards present the frontends and backends for Traefik and httpd services. As you can see, Traefik automaticaly set the name of the Route Rule. It joins the name of the service and the name of the directory where the config files are located: Host: [service].[directory]

We can add a service to the /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 [service].[directory]

We can now curl [service].[directory]

Set up custom domains

Instead of using the domain that Traefik automatically create, we can set up custome domains.

docker-compose.yml

version: "3"
services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:alpine
    labels:
      - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:traefik.com
      - traefik.port=8080
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - ${PWD}/traefik.toml:/etc/traefik/traefik.toml
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 8080:8080
  web:
    image: httpd
    labels:
      - traefik.frontend.rule=Host:apache.com
      - traefik.port=80
    restart: always

We can now access Traefik dashboard on traefik.com and the Apache server at apache.com.

Enable authentication to access Traefik dashboard

Anybody can access your Traefik dashboard unless you enable authentication.

In the traefik.toml file, edit the [entry.Points.dashboard] and add [entryPoints.dashboard.auth.basic]:

traefik.toml

...
[entryPoints]
  [entryPoints.http]
  address = ":80"
  [entryPoints.dashboard]
  address = ":8080"
    [entryPoints.dashboard.auth.basic]
    # user/password
    users =["user:password"]

You HAVE to generate the user and password by issuing:

htpasswd -n -B myusername

Scaling with Traefik

Scaling with docker-compose and Traefik is as simple as:

docker-compose up -d --scale myservice=3