consul/README.md

<h1>
  <img src="./website/public/img/logo.svg" align="left" height="46px" alt="Consul logo"/>
  <span>Consul</span>
</h1>

[![License: BUSL-1.1](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-BUSL--1.1-yellow.svg)](LICENSE)
[![Docker Pulls](https://img.shields.io/docker/pulls/hashicorp/consul.svg)](https://hub.docker.com/r/hashicorp/consul)
[![Go Report Card](https://goreportcard.com/badge/github.com/hashicorp/consul)](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/hashicorp/consul)

Consul is a distributed, highly available, and data center aware solution to connect and configure applications across dynamic, distributed infrastructure.

* Website: https://www.consul.io
* Tutorials: [HashiCorp Learn](https://learn.hashicorp.com/consul)
* Forum: [Discuss](https://discuss.hashicorp.com/c/consul)

Consul provides several key features:

* **Multi-Datacenter** - Consul is built to be datacenter aware, and can
  support any number of regions without complex configuration.

* **Service Mesh** - Consul Service Mesh enables secure service-to-service
  communication with automatic TLS encryption and identity-based authorization. Applications
  can use sidecar proxies in a service mesh configuration to establish TLS
  connections for inbound and outbound connections with Transparent Proxy.

* **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
  themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
  External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.

* **Health Checking** - Health Checking enables Consul to quickly alert
  operators about any issues in a cluster. The integration with service
  discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
  level circuit breakers.

* **Dynamic App Configuration** - An HTTP API that allows users to store indexed objects, like configuration parameters and application metadata, within Consul.

Consul runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows and includes an
optional [browser based UI](https://demo.consul.io). A commercial version
called [Consul Enterprise](https://www.consul.io/docs/enterprise) is also
available.

**Please note**: We take Consul's security and our users' trust very seriously. If you
believe you have found a security issue in Consul, please [responsibly disclose](https://www.hashicorp.com/security#vulnerability-reporting)
by contacting us at security@hashicorp.com.

## Quick Start

A few quick start guides are available on the Consul website:

* **Standalone binary install:** https://learn.hashicorp.com/collections/consul/get-started-vms
* **Minikube install:** https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/kubernetes-minikube
* **Kind install:** https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/kubernetes-kind
* **Kubernetes install:** https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/kubernetes-deployment-guide
* **Deploy HCP Consul:** https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/hcp-gs-deploy 

## Documentation

Full, comprehensive documentation is available on the Consul website: https://consul.io/docs

## Contributing

Thank you for your interest in contributing! Please refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/blob/main/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md)
for guidance. For contributions specifically to the browser based UI, please
refer to the UI's [README.md](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/blob/main/ui/packages/consul-ui/README.md)
for guidance.