Kubernetes

Consul has many integrations with Kubernetes. You can deploy Consul to Kubernetes using the Helm chart, sync services between Consul and Kubernetes, run Consul Connect Service Mesh, and more. This section documents the official integrations between Consul and Kubernetes.

Use Cases

Running a Consul server cluster: The Consul server cluster can run directly on Kubernetes. This can be used by both nodes within Kubernetes as well as nodes external to Kubernetes, as long as they can communicate to the server nodes via the network.

Running Consul clients: Consul clients can run as pods on every node and expose the Consul API to running pods. This enables many Consul tools such as envconsul, consul-template, and more to work on Kubernetes since a local agent is available. This will also register each Kubernetes node with the Consul catalog for full visibility into your infrastructure.

Consul Connect Service Mesh: Consul can automatically inject the Consul Connect sidecar into pods so that they can accept and establish encrypted and authorized network connections via mutual TLS. And because Connect can run anywhere, pods can also communicate with external services (and vice versa) over a fully encrypted connection.

Service sync to enable Kubernetes and non-Kubernetes services to communicate: Consul can sync Kubernetes services with its own service registry. This allows Kubernetes services to use native Kubernetes service discovery to discover and connect to external services registered in Consul, and for external services to use Consul service discovery to discover and connect to Kubernetes services.

And more! Consul can run directly on Kubernetes, so in addition to the native integrations provided by Consul itself, any other tool built for Kubernetes can choose to leverage Consul.

Getting Started With Consul and Kubernetes

There are several ways to try Consul with Kubernetes in different environments.

Tutorials

• The Getting Started with Consul Service Mesh track provides guidance for installing Consul as service mesh for Kubernetes using the Helm chart, deploying services in the service mesh, and using intentions to secure service communications.

• The Consul and Minikube guide is a quick step-by-step guide for deploying Consul with the official Helm chart on a local instance of Minikube.

• Review production best practices and cloud-specific configurations for deploying Consul on managed Kubernetes runtimes.

  • The Consul on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) tutorial is a complete step-by-step guide on how to deploy Consul on AKS. The guide also allows you to practice deploying two microservices.
  • The Consul on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes (EKS) tutorial is a complete step-by-step guide on how to deploy Consul on EKS. Additionally, it provides guidance on interacting with your datacenter with the Consul UI, CLI, and API.
  • The Consul on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) tutorial is a complete step-by-step guide on how to deploy Consul on GKE. Additionally, it provides guidance on interacting with your datacenter with the Consul UI, CLI, and API.

• The Consul and Kubernetes Reference Architecture guide provides recommended practices for production.

• The Consul and Kubernetes Deployment tutorial covers the necessary steps to install and configure a new Consul cluster on Kubernetes in production.

• The Secure Consul and Registered Services on Kubernetes tutorial covers the necessary steps to secure a Consul cluster running on Kubernetes in production.

• The Layer 7 Observability with Consul Service Mesh tutorial covers monitoring a Consul service mesh running on Kubernetes with Prometheus and Grafana.

Documentation

• Installing Consul covers how to install Consul using the Helm chart.
• Helm Chart Reference describes the different options for configuring the Helm chart.