Traefik Crash Course (Without docker)

Traefik is an open-source reverse proxy written in GO and marketed as an Edge Router. It supports automatic TLS and HTTP/2 by default and other cloud native features. In this video I want to discuss Traefik as a reverse proxy and load balancer.

0:00 Intro
2:00 Problem
4:00 Traefik Architecture
11:00 TCP vs HTTP Proxying
12:00 Demo
15:30 Install Treafik Docker
16:40 Treafik as a Layer 7 Proxy
18:00 Static Configuration
20:00 Proxy to all 4 backend NodeJS services
27:00 Split load to multiple backends (app1/app2)
32:00 Block certain requests (/admin)
34:20 Weighted RR
38:30 Treafik as a Layer 4 Proxy (tcp router)
43:30 Create DNS record
44:40 Enable HTTPS on Treafik (lets encrypt)
50:00 Disable 1.1/1.0 Enable TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3
53:50 Summary

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Stay Awesome,
Hussein

[Pyroteq]

Finally!!! A tutorial that shows how to actually setup Traefik instead of just copy/pasting 30 pages of Docker Compose scripts and then saying "tada it now works". I spent hours trying to figure out just how to make a simple reverse proxy until I found your video that actually works and doesn't give me 40, 000 lines of crap I don't need. My only suggestion would be if you make a mistake it's fine to leave it in, but for those following along some type of caption to say you fixed it later would help. I got stuck on the router name being duplicated and was wondering why the hell I couldn't get it working when my config matched yours exactly only to realise you went back and fixed it a bit later on.

[mujun_kross]

I have been trying to get my head around how to setup and use Traefik. This tutorial has helped me more than any other I have tried to follow. Thank you for the excellent tutorial and I look forward to viewing more of your work. Keep up the good job!

[jairunet]

There are a lot of people posting complicated, copy paste, with strange assumptions, you do it the right way Hussein. The fundamentals are core important, as you say the most important detail "understand"! thank you so very much I enjoy every note you shared, excellent, and I am definitely looking forward to continue learning from your excellent explanation.

[EddyCaffrey]

Finally the long-awaited Traefik video. Thanks, Mr. Hussein. Great like always. Thank you also for taking the time to learn and share your knowledge with us.

[kapurar]

Thank you! One of the best tutorials I have see on Traefik. I particularly apprecaite the fact that you did it without Docker and didnt just cut and paste some YAMl file.

[JensenSiu]

This tutorial is the only one I have found explaining Traefik without the use of docker and docker-compose.yml which is widely used almost anywhere else. So many thanks Hussein !
As yourself, I am working on my homelab environnement under macOS and there are so many restrictions compared to Linux systems that I am still struggling with very basics configurations.
For example, at start, I tried to use Traefik with Docker Desktop. Then I realized that on non-Linux systems, it is impossible to share the same network as the local machine for docker services. Therefore, it is impossible to get real client IPs. Then, I toggled to the standalone version of Traefik (easy homebrew on macOS!) wich makes it possible.
But I encountered a new problem with Let's Encrypt certificates behind Cloudflare which needs to pass environnement API key to authenticate certificate generation. At this point, I found no informations either on Traefik documentation or on forums to declare those API keys trough static or dynamic configuration files (the other only uses docker-compose.yml to declare those keys).
For the time being, I use previously manually generated certificates from Let' Encrypt stored on my local machine but I fell very frustrated to miss the use of the automatic service provided by Traefik.
Would you have a solution for this problem ?

[henryg]

Great tutorial! I also think traefik is overly complicated, but you have managed somehow to explain it in a manner I could understand the whole concept. Also, good choice of explaining this using a file as the provider. It made things easier to understand. Thank you!

[jeansilga]

Great video! I was able to get up and running pretty quickly with traefik thanks to this video. You made a wonderful job right there. I love your mindset. Keep up the good work. Cheers!

[tdevzone]

i like your enthusiasm when making this type of video thank you a

[mutley]

Thanks for your huge effort on this; the pain you go through was most instructive. I was writing a much bigger comment, but YouTube lost it when it moved onto the next video 😒, so I'll just say that:

- Traefik is less like a traditional load-balencer or a reverse-proxy, but is instead designed as an ingress-controller; this is particularly evident in the documention around middlewares
- Traefik is easier to type if you pronounce it "tray-fik"
- and if you really don't like YAML, Traefik also support TOML

I love your videos; they make it much easier to try and stay up-to-date (I had no idea there even was such as a thing as HTTP/3 until I found your channel). Thanks!

[AkshayKarode]

Much relief bro, you simply did very good. The video that traefik docs team should really watch.

[NastyWicked]

Great guide as always, nothing is boring with your enthusiasm :)
Also, when it comes to copy pasting tab-formatted text into tab aware IDEs, you can usually select the text and Shift + Tab to remove the indentations, should also work in Visual Studio Code

[KennedyWaithaka]

Great explanation. Traefik is overwhelming but once you get over the basics, everything flows naturally. I think explicit is better, so i appreciate Rule being mandatory field

[roger]

Great course!.
I was able to understand a lot of things that I didn't know how it worked.

[chrisumali]

thanks for the demo and info. I have setup traefik 2.6 with a cloudflare ARGO. The journey took several hours, but I guess its done. I learned some insight into your demo. Thanks, and have a great day

[AK]

This is Godsend too many tuts for Traefik is just copy this paste that and I get that this has the potential of automating stuff with certain services, but I never felt it was explained well and the labels thing that gets injected into Docker Compose files only adds to the confusion for me. Thanks for the stripped back approach to how to use this project.

[m_codes]

Love your content bro. Very appreciated

[cappedvillain]

Haha epic. Possibly my best channel to watch. Thank you

[shahinbayat]

That's great, u finally created a crash course on this awesome tool. Thanks alot

[pestorosso]

Thank you soooo much! I was a little bit frustrated with the traefik docs.