TCP proxy capabilities

Hi,

We have a tcp service we'd like to proxy requests to, and we were investigating haproxy as a possible solution for our requirements. So far, it doesn't seem like haproxy is suitable but I thought I'd run it by the community to confirm what I understand to be the case.

What we want is a proxy that will accept tcp connections on a specific port and always send a tcp 'ok' response to the requesting process whether or not there is a backend server available. If a backend server (we only plan on having one at the moment) is available then we want the request passed transparently through to the backend server. If the backend server is *not* available, then we want haproxy to operate as a kind of 'black hole', and just accept whatever is sent to it, dumping it to the equivalent of /dev/null. Basically, acting as an equivalent of the backend server.

Is the above possible with haproxy? Based on what I've read in the configuration documentation, the answer is no. However, there are a *lot* of options in there so I thought perhaps there's some obscure setting which would allow this to work.

Alternatively, does anyone know of a utility that could do what we want?

Thanks,
Guy Received on 2011/03/15 00:52