diff --git a/doc/configuration.txt b/doc/configuration.txt
index b33469721..918d76293 100644
--- a/doc/configuration.txt
+++ b/doc/configuration.txt
@@ -1790,9 +1790,14 @@ fd-hard-limit <number>
   much RAM for regular usage. The fd-hard-limit setting is provided to enforce
   a possibly lower bound to this limit. This means that it will always respect
   the system-imposed limits when they are below <number> but the specified
-  value will be used if system-imposed limits are higher. In the example below,
-  no other setting is specified and the maxconn value will automatically adapt
-  to the lower of "fd-hard-limit" and the system-imposed limit:
+  value will be used if system-imposed limits are higher. By default
+  fd-hard-limit is set to 1048576. This default could be changed via
+  DEFAULT_MAXFD compile-time variable, that could serve as the maximum (kernel)
+  system limit, if RLIMIT_NOFILE hard limit is extremely large. fd-hard-limit
+  set in global section allows to temporarily override the value provided via
+  DEFAULT_MAXFD at the build-time. In the example below, no other setting is
+  specified and the maxconn value will automatically adapt to the lower of
+  "fd-hard-limit" and the RLIMIT_NOFILE limit:
 
       global
           # use as many FDs as possible but no more than 50000
diff --git a/include/haproxy/defaults.h b/include/haproxy/defaults.h
index 73e8e0c92..35317b7af 100644
--- a/include/haproxy/defaults.h
+++ b/include/haproxy/defaults.h
@@ -295,6 +295,24 @@
 #define DEFAULT_MAXCONN 100
 #endif
 
+/* Default file descriptor limit.
+ *
+ * DEFAULT_MAXFD explicitly reduces the hard RLIMIT_NOFILE, which is used by the
+ * process as the base value to calculate the default global.maxsock, if
+ * global.maxconn, global.rlimit_memmax are not defined. This is useful in the
+ * case, when hard nofile limit has been bumped to fs.nr_open (kernel max),
+ * which is extremely large on many modern distros. So, we will also finish with
+ * an extremely large default global.maxsock. The only way to override
+ * DEFAULT_MAXFD, if defined, is to set fd_hard_limit in the config global
+ * section. If DEFAULT_MAXFD is not set, a reasonable maximum of 1048576 will be
+ * used as the default value, which almost guarantees that a process will
+ * correctly start in any situation and will be not killed then by watchdog,
+ * when it will loop over the allocated fdtab.
+*/
+#ifndef DEFAULT_MAXFD
+#define DEFAULT_MAXFD 1048576
+#endif
+
 /* Define a maxconn which will be used in the master process once it re-exec to
  * the MODE_MWORKER_WAIT and won't change when SYSTEM_MAXCONN is set.
  *
diff --git a/src/haproxy.c b/src/haproxy.c
index faff4b0f6..d7d743eef 100644
--- a/src/haproxy.c
+++ b/src/haproxy.c
@@ -1512,7 +1512,19 @@ static int compute_ideal_maxconn()
 	 *   - two FDs per connection
 	 */
 
-	if (global.fd_hard_limit && remain > global.fd_hard_limit)
+	/* on some modern distros for archs like amd64 fs.nr_open (kernel max) could
+	 * be in order of 1 billion, systemd since the version 256~rc3-3 bumped
+	 * fs.nr_open as the hard RLIMIT_NOFILE (rlim_fd_max_at_boot). If we are
+	 * started without global.maxconn or global.rlimit_memmax_all, we risk to
+	 * finish with computed global.maxconn = ~500000000 and computed
+	 * global.maxsock = ~1000000000. So, fdtab will be unnecessary and extremely
+	 * huge and watchdog will kill the process, when it tries to loop over the
+	 * fdtab (see fd_reregister_all).
+	 */
+	if (!global.fd_hard_limit)
+		global.fd_hard_limit = DEFAULT_MAXFD;
+
+	if (remain > global.fd_hard_limit)
 		remain = global.fd_hard_limit;
 
 	/* subtract listeners and checks */