2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
|
|
|
---
|
2020-04-07 18:55:19 +00:00
|
|
|
layout: docs
|
|
|
|
|
page_title: Consul Enterprise Advanced Federation
|
|
|
|
|
description: >-
|
|
|
|
|
Consul Enterprise enables you to federate Consul datacenters together on a
|
|
|
|
|
pairwise basis, enabling partially-connected network topologies like
|
|
|
|
|
hub-and-spoke.
|
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Consul Enterprise Advanced Federation
|
|
|
|
|
|
2020-04-23 22:13:18 +00:00
|
|
|
<EnterpriseAlert>
|
2021-12-10 22:42:33 +00:00
|
|
|
This feature requires
|
|
|
|
|
self-managed Consul Enterprise.
|
|
|
|
|
Refer to the{' '}
|
2022-04-27 16:25:16 +00:00
|
|
|
<a href="/docs/enterprise#consul-enterprise-feature-availability">enterprise feature matrix</a>
|
2021-12-10 22:42:33 +00:00
|
|
|
for additional information.
|
2020-04-23 22:13:18 +00:00
|
|
|
</EnterpriseAlert>
|
|
|
|
|
|
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
|
|
|
Consul's core federation capability uses the same gossip mechanism that is used
|
|
|
|
|
for a single datacenter. This requires that every server from every datacenter
|
|
|
|
|
be in a fully connected mesh with an open gossip port (8302/tcp and 8302/udp)
|
|
|
|
|
and an open server RPC port (8300/tcp). For organizations with large numbers of
|
|
|
|
|
datacenters, it becomes difficult to support a fully connected mesh. It is often
|
|
|
|
|
desirable to have topologies like hub-and-spoke with central management
|
|
|
|
|
datacenters and "spoke" datacenters that can't interact with each other.
|
|
|
|
|
|
2020-04-09 23:46:54 +00:00
|
|
|
[Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/consul) offers a [network
|
2020-08-13 21:02:44 +00:00
|
|
|
area mechanism](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/federation-network-areas) that allows operators to
|
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
|
|
|
federate Consul datacenters together on a pairwise basis, enabling
|
|
|
|
|
partially-connected network topologies. Once a link is created, Consul agents
|
|
|
|
|
can make queries to the remote datacenter in service of both API and DNS
|
|
|
|
|
requests for remote resources (in spite of the partially-connected nature of the
|
|
|
|
|
topology as a whole). Consul datacenters can simultaneously participate in both
|
|
|
|
|
network areas and the existing WAN pool, which eases migration.
|
