Traefik Proxy ↔ Docker Provider: Configuring Connection‑Draining Timeout During Graceful Reload

Answer to the Question

Yes – Traefik 2.x allows you to change the period it waits for in‑flight traffic to finish during a graceful reload or shutdown. The setting is a global option called gracefulShutdownTimeout and can be set in the static configuration file or via an environment variable.

What the setting does

• It applies to the entire Traefik instance; there is no per‑provider or per‑service override.
• During a reload, the old process keeps accepting the same TCP connections until the timeout expires or all requests on those connections have completed.
• The timeout covers HTTP/1.1 requests, HTTP/2 streams, and any other protocols that use the underlying TCP connection. It does not change the lifetime of an already‑started HTTP/2 stream; the stream will finish normally, but the connection will not be closed until the timeout ends.
• Default value is 30 seconds in Traefik 2.7+. Earlier releases may default to 30 s or 1 minute; check your version’s documentation.

How to set it in a static file

# traefik.yml (YAML example)
global:
  gracefulShutdownTimeout: 45s  # change to desired value

For TOML or JSON, the key is the same:

# traefik.toml
[global]
gracefulShutdownTimeout = "45s"

// traefik.json
{
  "global": {
    "gracefulShutdownTimeout": "45s"
  }
}

How to set it via an environment variable

If Traefik is launched from Docker or systemd, you can use:

TRAEFIK_GRACEFUL_SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT=45s

Make sure the variable name matches the exact case shown above; Traefik maps it to the same gracefulShutdownTimeout option.

Verifying the change

1. Restart or reload Traefik.
2. Check the startup logs for a line like Graceful shutdown timeout set to 45s.
3. Send a long‑running request (e.g., curl -v http://localhost/slow) while triggering a reload and confirm that the request completes normally after the configured timeout.
4. Observe that no new connections are accepted after the reload and that all existing connections are closed only after the timeout period.

What if you’re using an older Traefik release?

Older versions may expose the same option but under a different key name or with a different default. If the above setting does not appear in your logs, check the traefik -h help output for the correct global flag.

Missing Detail?

If you’re running a version prior to 2.7 or if the timeout still appears to be 30 s after setting it, let me know the exact Traefik version you’re using. That will help confirm whether the setting is supported or if a newer release is required.