---
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Guides"
sidebar_current: "docs-guides"
---

# Consul Guides

This section provides various guides for common actions. Due to the nature
of Consul, some of these procedures can be complex, so our goal is to provide
guidance do doing them safely.

The following guides are available:

 * [Bootstrapping](/docs/guides/bootstrapping.html) - This guide covers bootstrapping a new
 datacenter. This covers safely adding the initial Consul servers.

 * [DNS Forwarding](/docs/guides/forwarding.html) - Forward DNS queries from Bind to Consul

 * [External Services](/docs/guides/external.html) - This guide covers registering
 an external service. This allows using 3rd party services within the Consul framework.

 * [Multiple Datacenters](/docs/guides/datacenters.html) - Configuring Consul to support multiple
 datacenters.

 * TODO: Adding and removing servers