2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
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---
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2020-04-07 18:55:19 +00:00
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layout: docs
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page_title: Consul Enterprise Advanced Federation
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sidebar_title: Advanced Federation
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2020-04-07 18:55:19 +00:00
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description: >-
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Consul Enterprise enables you to federate Consul datacenters together on a
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pairwise basis, enabling partially-connected network topologies like
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hub-and-spoke.
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2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
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---
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# Consul Enterprise Advanced Federation
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Consul's core federation capability uses the same gossip mechanism that is used
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for a single datacenter. This requires that every server from every datacenter
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be in a fully connected mesh with an open gossip port (8302/tcp and 8302/udp)
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and an open server RPC port (8300/tcp). For organizations with large numbers of
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datacenters, it becomes difficult to support a fully connected mesh. It is often
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desirable to have topologies like hub-and-spoke with central management
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datacenters and "spoke" datacenters that can't interact with each other.
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2020-04-09 23:46:54 +00:00
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[Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/consul) offers a [network
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2019-05-15 15:49:41 +00:00
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area mechanism](https://learn.hashicorp.com/consul/day-2-operations/advanced-federation) that allows operators to
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2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
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federate Consul datacenters together on a pairwise basis, enabling
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partially-connected network topologies. Once a link is created, Consul agents
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can make queries to the remote datacenter in service of both API and DNS
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requests for remote resources (in spite of the partially-connected nature of the
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topology as a whole). Consul datacenters can simultaneously participate in both
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network areas and the existing WAN pool, which eases migration.
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