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Consul Cheatsheet

A quick reference for Consul, covering key concepts, CLI commands, configuration, and best practices for service discovery, health checking, and configuration management.

Core Concepts

Service Discovery

Service Discovery enables applications to find and connect to each other dynamically. Consul maintains a catalog of available services and their locations.

Key Features:

  • Service Registration: Services register themselves with Consul.
  • Health Checking: Consul monitors the health of registered services.
  • DNS and HTTP Interface: Applications can query Consul for service locations using DNS or HTTP.

Benefits:

  • Improved application resilience.
  • Simplified service configuration.
  • Dynamic scaling and deployment.

Health Checking

Health Checks ensure that only healthy services are used. Consul supports various health check types.

Types of Health Checks:

  • HTTP: Checks if an HTTP endpoint returns a 2xx or 3xx status code.
  • TCP: Checks if a TCP connection can be established.
  • Script: Executes a script and checks its exit code.
  • TTL: Requires services to periodically update their status.

Health Check States:

  • passing: The service is healthy.
  • warning: The service is experiencing issues but is still functional.
  • critical: The service is unhealthy.

Key/Value Store

Key/Value (KV) Store provides a hierarchical storage system for configuration data and other metadata. It is commonly used for centralized configuration management.

Key Features:

  • Hierarchical key structure.
  • Support for atomic operations.
  • Change notification via blocking queries.

Use Cases:

  • Storing application configuration.
  • Feature toggles.
  • Leader election.

CLI Commands

Basic Commands

consul members

Lists the members of the Consul cluster.

consul info

Displays information about the Consul agent.

consul catalog services

Lists all registered services.

consul catalog nodes

Lists all registered nodes.

KV Store Commands

consul kv put <key> <value>

Sets a key/value pair in the KV store.

Example:

consul kv put myapp/config/version 1.0

consul kv get <key>

Retrieves the value for a given key.

Example:

consul kv get myapp/config/version

consul kv delete <key>

Deletes a key from the KV store.

Example:

consul kv delete myapp/config/version

consul kv export <prefix>

Exports keys with specified prefix.

Example:

consul kv export myapp/config/

Agent Commands

consul agent -dev

Starts a Consul agent in development mode (not for production).

consul agent -server -bootstrap-expect=1 -data-dir=/tmp/consul -node=server-1 -client=0.0.0.0

Starts a Consul server agent. (example)

consul agent -data-dir=/tmp/consul -node=client-1 -client=0.0.0.0 -join=<server_ip>

Starts a Consul client agent and joins an existing cluster. (example)

Configuration

Agent Configuration

Consul agent configuration is typically done via JSON files. Key parameters include data_dir, node_name, server, bootstrap_expect, and client_addr.

Example configuration file (agent.json):

{
  "data_dir": "/opt/consul",
  "node_name": "consul-server-0",
  "server": true,
  "bootstrap_expect": 3,
  "client_addr": "0.0.0.0",
  "advertise_addr": "192.168.1.10",
  "ports": {
    "dns": 8600,
    "http": 8500,
    "https": 8501
  }
}

Start the agent with the configuration file:

consul agent -config-file=/path/to/agent.json

Service Definitions

Services are defined in JSON files and placed in the Consul configuration directory or registered via the HTTP API.

Example service definition (web.json):

{
  "id": "web-1",
  "name": "web",
  "tags": ["rails", "load-balanced"],
  "port": 80,
  "address": "192.168.1.20",
  "check": {
    "http": "http://192.168.1.20:80/health",
    "interval": "10s",
    "timeout": "5s"
  }
}

Place the web.json file in the Consul configuration directory (e.g., /etc/consul.d/) or register it using the HTTP API.

Health Check Definitions

Health checks can be defined alongside service definitions or separately.

Example health check definition (check_web.json):

{
  "id": "web-check",
  "name": "Web Health Check",
  "service_id": "web-1",
  "http": "http://192.168.1.20:80/health",
  "interval": "10s",
  "timeout": "5s"
}

Place the check_web.json file in the Consul configuration directory or register it using the HTTP API.

API Endpoints

Service Catalog

GET /v1/catalog/services

Lists all services in the catalog.

Example:

curl http://localhost:8500/v1/catalog/services

GET /v1/catalog/service/<service>

Lists instances of a specific service.

Example:

curl http://localhost:8500/v1/catalog/service/web

GET /v1/health/service/<service>

Lists healthy instances of a specific service.

Example:

curl http://localhost:8500/v1/health/service/web

Key/Value Store

GET /v1/kv/<key>

Retrieves the value for a given key.

Example:

curl http://localhost:8500/v1/kv/myapp/config/version

PUT /v1/kv/<key>

Sets a key/value pair.

Example:

curl -X PUT -d '1.0' http://localhost:8500/v1/kv/myapp/config/version

DELETE /v1/kv/<key>

Deletes a key.

Example:

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:8500/v1/kv/myapp/config/version

Agent API

PUT /v1/agent/service/register

Registers a service.

Example:

curl -X PUT -d @service.json http://localhost:8500/v1/agent/service/register

PUT /v1/agent/service/deregister/<service_id>

Deregisters a service.

Example:

curl -X PUT http://localhost:8500/v1/agent/service/deregister/web-1

PUT /v1/agent/check/register

Registers a check.

Example:

curl -X PUT -d @check.json http://localhost:8500/v1/agent/check/register
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