Consul is a tool for service discovery and configuration. Consul is
Consul is a distributed, highly available, and data center aware solution to connect and configure applications across dynamic, distributed infrastructure.
distributed, highly available, and extremely scalable.
Consul provides several key features:
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/Service Segmentation** - Consul Connect 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 without being aware of Connect at all.
* **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
* **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.
External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.
@ -18,18 +25,10 @@ Consul provides several key features:
discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
level circuit breakers.
level circuit breakers.
* **Service Segmentation/Service Mesh** - Consul Connect 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 without being aware of Connect at all.
* **Key/Value Storage** - A flexible key/value store enables storing
* **Key/Value Storage** - A flexible key/value store enables storing
dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and
dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and
more. The simple HTTP API makes it easy to use anywhere.
more. The simple HTTP API makes it easy to use anywhere.
* **Multi-Datacenter** - Consul is built to be datacenter aware, and can
support any number of regions without complex configuration.
Consul runs on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. A commercial
Consul runs on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. A commercial
version called [Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul)
version called [Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul)