Consul 是一套开源的分布式服务发现和配置管理系统，由 HashiCorp 公司用 Go 语言开发。
Service Discovery and Configuration Made Easy
Consul is a distributed, highly available system. This section will cover the basics, purposely omitting some unnecessary detail, so you can get a quick understanding of how Consul works. For more detail, please refer to the in-depth architecture overview.
Every node that provides services to Consul runs a Consul agent. Running an agent is not required for discovering other services or getting/setting key/value data. The agent is responsible for health checking the services on the node as well as the node itself.
The agents talk to one or more Consul servers. The Consul servers are where data is stored and replicated. The servers themselves elect a leader. While Consul can function with one server, 3 to 5 is recommended to avoid failure scenarios leading to data loss. A cluster of Consul servers is recommended for each datacenter.
Components of your infrastructure that need to discover other services or nodes can query any of the Consul servers or any of the Consul agents. The agents forward queries to the servers automatically.
Each datacenter runs a cluster of Consul servers. When a cross-datacenter service discovery or configuration request is made, the local Consul servers forward the request to the remote datacenter and return the result.
它具有很多优点。包括： 基于 raft 协议，比较简洁； 支持健康检查, 同时支持 HTTP 和 DNS 协议 支持跨数据中心的 WAN 集群 提供图形界面 跨平台，支持 Linux、Mac、Windows
Service Discovery
HashiCorp Consul makes it simple for services to register themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface. Register external services such as SaaS providers as well.
Failure Detection
Pairing service discovery with health checking prevents routing requests to unhealthy hosts and enables services to easily provide circuit breakers.
Multi Datacenter
Consul scales to multiple datacenters out of the box with no complicated configuration. Look up services in other datacenters, or keep the request local.
KV Storage
Flexible key/value store for dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and more. Long poll for near-instant notification of configuration changes.
服务发现的框架常用的有
zookeeper
eureka
etcd
consul
基本概念
agent
组成 consul 集群的每个成员上都要运行一个 agent，可以通过 consul agent 命令来启动。agent 可以运行在 server 状态或者 client 状态。自然的，运行在 server 状态的节点被称为 server 节点；运行在 client 状态的节点被称为 client 节点。
client 节点
负责转发所有的 RPC 到 server 节点。本身无状态，且轻量级，因此，可以部署大量的 client 节点。
server 节点
负责组成 cluster 的复杂工作（选举、状态维护、转发请求到 lead），以及 consul 提供的服务（响应 RCP 请求）。考虑到容错和收敛，一般部署 3 ~ 5 个比较合适。
Gossip
基于 Serf 实现的 gossip 协议，负责成员、失败探测、事件广播等。通过 UDP 实现各个节点之间的消息。分为 LAN 上的和 WAN 上的两种情形。
Consul 的使用场景
1)docker 实例的注册与配置共享
2)coreos 实例的注册与配置共享
3)vitess 集群
4)SaaS 应用的配置共享
5)与 confd 服务集成，动态生成 nginx 和 haproxy 配置文件
Consul 的优势
使用 Raft 算法来保证一致性, 比复杂的 Paxos 算法更直接. 相比较而言, zookeeper 采用的是 Paxos, 而 etcd 使用的则是 Raft.
支持多数据中心，内外网的服务采用不同的端口进行监听。 多数据中心集群可以避免单数据中心的单点故障,而其部署则需要考虑网络延迟, 分片等情况等. zookeeper 和 etcd 均不提供多数据中心功能的支持.
支持健康检查. etcd 不提供此功能.
支持 http 和 dns 协议接口. zookeeper 的集成较为复杂, etcd 只支持 http 协议.
官方提供web管理界面, etcd 无此功能.