2014-02-08 00:41:03 +00:00
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---
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layout: "intro"
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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page_title: "Consul vs. Chef, Puppet, etc."
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sidebar_current: "vs-other-chef"
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---
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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# Consul vs. Chef, Puppet, etc.
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2014-02-08 00:41:03 +00:00
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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It is not uncommon to find people using Chef, Puppet, and other configuration
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management tools to build service discovery mechanisms. This is usually
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done by querying global state to construct configuration files on each
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2014-04-14 18:53:29 +00:00
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node during a periodic convergence run.
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Unfortunately, this approach has
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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a number of pitfalls. The configuration information is static,
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and cannot update any more frequently than convergence runs. Generally this
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is on the interval of many minutes or hours. Additionally, there is no
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mechanism to incorporate the system state in the configuration. Nodes which
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are unhealthy may receive traffic exacerbating issues further. Using this
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approach also makes supporting multiple datacenters challenging as a central
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group of servers must manage all datacenters.
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2014-02-08 00:41:03 +00:00
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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Consul is designed specifically as a service discovery tool. As such,
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it is much more dynamic and responsive to the state of the cluster. Nodes
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can register and deregister the services they provide, enabling dependent
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applications and services to rapidly discover all providers. By using the
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integrating health checking, Consul can route traffic away from unhealthy
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nodes, and allowing systems and services to gracefully recover. Static configuration
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that may be provided by configuraiton management tools can be moved into the
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dynamic key/value store. This allows application configuration to be updated
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without a slow convergence run. Lastly, because each datacenter runs indepedently,
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supporting multiple datacenters is no different than a single datacenter.
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2014-02-08 00:41:03 +00:00
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2014-04-10 20:51:08 +00:00
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That said, Consul is not a replacement for configuration management tools.
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These tools are still critical to setup setup applications and even to
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configure Consul itself. Static provisioning is best managed
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by existing tools, while dynamic state and discovery is better managed by
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Consul. The separation of configuration management and cluster management
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also has a number of advantageous side effects: Chef recipes and Puppet manifests
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become simpler without global state, periodic runs are no longer required for service
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or configuration changes, and the infrastructure can become immutable since config management
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runs require no global state.
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