2025-09-13
In the previous article, we learned how to reach out to remote servers using ping and trace the path of packets with traceroute. But what if ping google.com doesn’t work, and traceroute stops right at the first step?
That’s a clear sign that the problem is nearby: on your computer, in the network cable, or in your home router. Before calling tech support, let’s check our own local network.
2025-09-12
Modern users expect web applications to work as fast and responsive as native software. Chats, stock quotes, collaborative document editing — all these scenarios require instant data exchange. In this article, we’ll break down how Long Polling works, why it was replaced by WebSockets, and how to properly configure these technologies on popular web servers.
HTTP was originally designed for the request-response model: the client contacts the server, the server replies, and the connection closes. For dynamic applications, this is inconvenient.
2025-09-06
Choosing a web server and reverse proxy today depends on tasks and infrastructure. Caddy, Traefik, HAProxy, Nginx, and Apache are five popular solutions, each with its strengths and weaknesses.
In this article, we’ll compare them by key criteria: philosophy, installation, SSL, CI/CD, and complexity.
| Criterion | Caddy | Traefik | HAProxy | Nginx | Apache |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy | Simplicity, automatic SSL | Dynamic routing and Service Discovery | High-performance load balancer | Universal web server and proxy | Classic web server, static approach |
| Installation | Single binary | Container, requires setup | Single binary, manual configuration | OS package, easy installation | OS package, easy installation |
| SSL Automation | Built-in, main advantage | Built-in, part of ecosystem | No (requires external integration, e.g., certbot) | Partial (via certbot or modules) | Partial (via certbot or modules) |
| CI/CD | Very easy integration | Ideal for microservices | Used for high-load balancing | Requires manual steps, integration possible | Requires manual steps, integration possible |
| Complexity | Low, beginner-friendly | Medium/high, requires orchestrator knowledge | Medium, more complex configs | Medium, rich ecosystem | Medium, often bloated configs |
| Performance | Good, but not top-tier | Good | Excellent, optimized for load balancing | Excellent | Average |
| Best Use Case | Local development, quick MVPs | Docker/Kubernetes, microservices | High-load systems, load balancing | Universal choice for web and proxy | Static site hosting, legacy systems |
Ideal for:
2025-09-05
Unlike Caddy, which focuses on simplicity, Traefik (pronounced Traffic) was built to solve one specific task: routing traffic in dynamic environments.
It is a reverse proxy and load balancer designed specifically for Docker, Kubernetes, and other orchestrators. The main difference from Nginx is not static configuration, but the ability to automatically discover and serve services.
The philosophy of Traefik is built on the principle of Service Discovery.
2025-09-05
Logrotate is a powerful tool for log management in Linux, but its interaction with Docker has its own specifics.
This guide explains how to properly use logrotate with Docker containers and when it’s better to rely on Docker’s built-in log management tools.
Docker collects logs from the standard output streams (stdout and stderr) of containers and, by default, stores them as JSON files:
/var/lib/docker/containers/\<container\_id>/\<container\_id>-json.log
If a container generates a lot of logs, these files can take up gigabytes and quickly consume all available disk space.
2025-09-04
In a world where setting up a web server often requires studying complex configuration files, Caddy offers a radically different approach. It is a modern, multifunctional web server, reverse proxy, and certificate authority in one package.
Caddy was created with a single goal: to provide maximum simplicity. If you are tired of the redundancy of Nginx or Apache, then Caddy is what you’re looking for. Its main “killer feature” is fully automatic SSL certificate management, making it an indispensable tool for developers.
2025-08-05
Developers and system administrators using servers on the OpenStack platform (for example, the C*-M*-D* hosting plans from reg.ru) sometimes encounter mysterious network problems. The internet seems to work, but when trying to transfer large amounts of data or establish connections to certain services, requests may hang or fail due to timeouts.
The provider explains this issue as a feature of their infrastructure:
Servers on the OpenStack platform use VxLAN technology, which reserves 50 bytes for service information. Because of this, the maximum transmission unit (MTU) on the server’s main network interface (
ens3) is 1450 bytes.
2025-07-21
We’re wrapping up our series on centralized logging with a modern and innovative solution: Loki together with Grafana. Developed by Grafana Labs, this stack reimagines how logging works — making it simple, efficient, and especially appealing for those already using Prometheus.
Loki is a log aggregation system designed to minimize resource usage. It indexes only metadata (labels), while the log messages themselves are stored in compressed form — following the same philosophy as Prometheus, but for logs.
2025-07-20
We’ve already covered ELK Stack and OpenSearch — powerful logging tools with scalable architectures. Now let’s take a look at Graylog — a dedicated log management platform offering convenience, powerful processing, and flexible alerting.
Graylog is a centralized log management system designed for ease of use and rich capabilities. Unlike the ELK Stack, Graylog was built from the ground up as a unified platform.
2025-07-19
We’ve explored the ELK Stack, its power — and, unfortunately, its licensing changes. These changes sparked debate within the open-source community and led to the creation of a worthy alternative — OpenSearch.
OpenSearch is a fully open-source fork of the last open versions of Elasticsearch and Kibana, released under the Apache 2.0 license. The project was initiated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2021 and has since evolved as an independent open-source initiative under the OpenSearch Project.