Pardon, an HTTP server. It talks HTTP and HTTPS, as well as raw TCP. If you define a web server as something that talks HTTP/HTTPS and also is able to serve static files off the filesystems then, not HAProxy is not that, but this is really splitting hairs.
No, it's not an HTTP server. It has that capability to serve a static is almost solely for the purpose of maintenance pages and is severely limited, even to the point of needing to restart the server if you want to update the page.
It speaks HTTP in as much as it needs to to figure out how to forward requests. It doesn't generate return headers for content; it doesn't serve content; it moves streams from A to B.
> In HTTP mode, it is possible to rewrite, add or delete some of the request and
response headers based on regular expressions.
Second of, it speaks HTTP, and it serves content that it is able to fetch from a content producing backend. In my book it's an HTTP server.
Third off, the difference is so pedantic that I don't think it makes any difference what we call it. We both know what it is, and what it is used for in the context of hosting web applications.
We don't call Varnish a web server, and it does quite a bit more with HTTP than HAProxy does.
We don't call a car a truck, even if you can haul things around it it.
Pedanticism is never a good argument against someone. 1) It's an ad hominem. 2) It doesn't actually do anything. 3) If everyone knew what it was, they wouldn't call it a web server.
