What this book covers
Chapter 1, Consul Overview – Operation and Use Cases, starts the book with a short overview of Consul and a high-level understanding of the three primary Consul use cases.
Chapter 2, Architecture – How Does It Work?, shows us how the servers and agents operate and communicate, now that we have a basic understanding of "why" Consul.
Chapter 3, Keep It Safe, Stupid, and Secure Your Cluster!, looks at securing the entire system, now that we understand how Consul operates. We'll learn how to apply Zero Trust to all of our applications.
Chapter 4, Data Center (Not Trade) Federation, looks at how Consul facilitates the extension of the cluster across multiple environments for world domination, now that, within the global and everchanging world, our applications must extend beyond the geographical borders of data centers.
Chapter 5, Little Bo Peep Lost Her Service, looks at how Consul not only discovers services – the foundation of Consul's operation being service discovery, but within those services, it also monitors and shares service status information.
Chapter 6, Connect Four or More, looks at, with knowledge of our services and their location(s), using Consul to identify and secure the communication among our services.
Chapter 7, Animate Me, covers how to simplify our networking infrastructure management with Consul's service information, with an entire world outside of Consul that can make use of its dynamic service discovery.
Chapter 8, Where Do We Go Now?, provides some pathways to continue your Consul education and operation. We introduce the HashiCorp certification program for Consul Associate Certification for further knowledge. Additionally, we'll show you how to sign up for HashiCorp's hosted Consul solution enabling the adoption of Consul without the overhead of managing the cluster itself.