Connect Configuration

    Tip: Connect is enabled by default when running Consul in dev mode with .

    The first step to use Connect is to enable Connect for your Consul cluster. By default, Connect is disabled. Enabling Connect requires changing the configuration of only your Consul servers (not client agents). To enable Connect, add the following to a new or existing server configuration file. In an existing cluster, this configuration change requires a Consul server restart, which you can perform one server at a time to maintain availability. In HCL:

    This will enable Connect and configure your Consul cluster to use the built-in certificate authority for creating and managing certificates. You may also configure Consul to use an external , such as Vault.

    Other optional Connect configurations that you can set in the server configuration file include:

    If you would like to use Envoy as your Connect proxy you will need to .

    Additionally if you plan on using the observability features of Connect, it can be convenient to configure your proxies and services using configuration entries which you can interact with using the CLI or API, or by creating configuration entry files. You will want to enable on clients, which allows each service’s proxy configuration to be managed centrally via API.

    To account for common Connect use cases where you have many instances of the same service, and many colocated sidecar proxies, Consul allows you to customize the settings for all of your proxies or all the instances of a given service at once using Configuration Entries.

    You can override centralized configurations for individual proxy instances in their , and the default protocols for service instances in their service registrations.

    Consul Connect is especially useful if you are using an orchestrator like Nomad or Kubernetes, because these orchestrators can deploy thousands of service instances which frequently move hosts. Sidecars for each service can be configured through these schedulers, and in some cases they can automate Consul configuration, sidecar deployment, and service registration.

    Kubernetes

    The Consul Helm chart can automate much of Consul Connect’s configuration, and makes it easy to automatically inject Envoy sidecars into new pods when they are deployed. Learn about the Helm chart in general, or if you are already familiar with it, check out its .