I have read about various issues in using HAProxy and socket-io (websockets mode). I am currently working on a project that's heading towards that direction - anyone has anything to share on that front?
Thanks. Looks like it's available only on the development version - I wonder if it's production ready...
Also - I took a look at the article - it does not mention using a total node approach of using something like node-http-proxy for load balancing. Any idea on such a set-up? I need HTTPS as well.
A pure-Node approach is a lot simpler: you can just use Node's HTTPS (if you don't care about load balancing) and attach Socket.io to it. Just don't put your Socket.io server behind Nginx if you want WebSockets support.
With load balancing, I would recommend going with Stud/Stunnel and HAProxy. Terminating SSL with a specialized piece of software is nicer (separate SSL overhead to another box), and using a separate load balancer allows for more flexible options, e.g. serving static assets from Nginx. There is nothing wrong with node-http-proxy, it's just that these two projects have been around for longer and are better understood from an ops perspective.
You cannot use round robin load balancing, you need to have at least IP-based stickiness with Socket.io for now. Well, you can round robin if you use the Redis store but you'll run into inefficiencies with https://github.com/LearnBoost/socket.io/issues/686 . I'll do a bit more coverage on other SIO deployment-related issues once I get the chapter on Socket.io finished for my (free) book in a few weeks.
If I were starting now, I'd just ignore the Flash sockets transport since it makes the whole stack more complex due to not looking like HTTP to load balancers, and start with Engine.io / WebSocket.io to take advantage of their simplicity.
