TraefikLabs recently announced the latest release of Traefik Proxy v3.3 (codenamed “saint-nectaire” due to a French cheese). This release focuses primarily on two critical areas: observability capabilities and improved documentation structure. These enhancements aim to make the popular open-source reverse proxy even more powerful for platform engineers working in complex cloud-native environments.
Observability has become essential in modern infrastructure, allowing engineers to quickly identify and recover from service disruptions. Traefik v3.3 significantly expands its observability toolkit through extended OpenTelemetry integration. Building on the foundation established in v3.0, this release adds experimental support for logs and access logs alongside existing metrics and tracing capabilities. This creates a comprehensive observability solution that provides complete visibility into ingress traffic patterns.
Additionally, the new version introduces granular configuration control. Previously, observability features could only be enabled globally. With v3.3, platform engineers can now define default behaviors at the entryPoint level, enable or disable tracing, metrics, and access logs on a per-router basis, override inherited configurations for specific routers, and apply temporary observability settings during troubleshooting. This flexibility allows teams to implement precise monitoring strategies tailored to their specific needs, reducing unnecessary data collection while ensuring critical services remain observable.
This is now equivalent:
entryPoints:
foo:
address: ':80'
To this:
entryPoints:
foo:
address: ':80'
observability:
tracing: true
In this release, Traefik has begun a major revamp of its documentation architecture, recognizing this as a crucial entry point for users. The v3.3 release delivers the first milestone with a completely reorganized reference section that targets three distinct personas: beginners, advanced operators, and advanced developers. It separates high-level use cases from detailed configuration options and creates a more intuitive structure for finding information.
The new reference documentation follows a logical progression from installation through configuration discovery, entry points, observability settings, and more. This improved organization helps both newcomers and experienced users quickly locate the information they require.
Beyond the core focus areas, v3.3 introduces several quality-of-life improvements. These include better control over ACME (Let’s Encrypt) propagation checks, configuration dump support via API endpoint for easier troubleshooting, optional IngressRoute kind in Kubernetes configurations, and Kubernetes serving endpoint status support for stickiness. The update also brings configurable paths for sticky cookies, host header configuration in the HTTP provider, preservation of Location headers in ForwardAuth middleware, and more efficient basic auth hash calculation for concurrent requests. Platform engineers will also appreciate request body forwarding to authorization servers, configurable API and Dashboard base paths, and the option to abort startup if plugin loading fails.
When considering alternatives to Traefik Proxy, many other reverse proxies and load balancers stand out: Nginx, serves as both a web server and a reverse proxy, offering stability and low resource consumption, making it ideal for handling high-traffic applications. For those seeking simplicity with built-in automatic HTTPS, Caddy is another option, featuring an easy-to-use configuration and strong security defaults. Envoy Proxy, originally developed by Lyft, is a cloud-native proxy that excels in dynamic service discovery, observability, and advanced traffic management, making it a great fit for microservices architectures. Lastly, Kong doubles as an API gateway and microservices management tool, providing authentication, rate limiting, and logging functionalities on top of Nginx. Each of these alternatives presents unique strengths, catering to different needs based on security, scalability, and ease of use.
