TCP load balancing

By default, dockercloud/haproxy runs in http mode. If you want a linked service to run in a tcp mode, you can specify the environment variable TCP_PORTS, which is a comma separated ports(e.g. 9000, 9001).

For example, if you run:

docker --name app-1 --expose 9000 --expose 9001 -e TCP_PORTS="9000, 9001" your_app
docker --name app-2 --expose 9000 --expose 9001 -e TCP_PORTS="9000, 9001" your_app
docker run --link app-1:app-1 --link app-2:app-2 -p 9000:9000, 9001:9001 dockercloud/haproxy

Then, haproxy balances the load between app-1 and app-2 in both port 9000 and 9001 respectively.

Moreover, If you have more exposed ports than TCP_PORTS, the rest of the ports will be balancing using http mode.

For example, if you run:

docker --name app-1 --expose 80 --expose 22 -e TCP_PORTS=22 your_app
docker --name app-2 --expose 80 --expose 22 -e TCP_PORTS=22 your_app
docker run --link app-1:app-2 --link app-2:app-2 -p 80:80 -p 22:22 dockercloud/haproxy

Then, haproxy balances in http mode at port 80 and balances in tcp on port at port 22.

In this way, you can do the load balancing both in tcp and in http at the same time.

In TCP_PORTS, if you set port that ends with '/ssl', for example 2222/ssl, HAProxy will set ssl termination on port 2222.

Note:

1. You are able to set VIRTUAL_HOST and TCP_PORTS at the same them, giving more control on http mode.
2. Be careful that, the load balancing on tcp port is applied to all the services. If you link two(or more) different services using the same TCP_PORTS, dockercloud/haproxy considers them coming from the same service.