---
layout: docs
page_title: Consul Enterprise Admin Partitions
description: Consul Enterprise enables you to create paritions that can be administrated across namespaces.
---

# Consul Enterprise Admin Partitions

<EnterpriseAlert>
  This feature requires{' '}
  <a href="https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul/">Consul Enterprise</a>{' '}
  with the Governance and Policy module.
</EnterpriseAlert>

This topic provides and overview of admin partitions, which are entities that define one or more administrative boundaries for single Consul deployments. 

## Introduction

Admin partitions exist a level above namespaces in the identity hierarchy. They contain one or more namespaces and allow multiple independent tenants to share a Consul server cluster. As a result, admin partitions enable you to define administrative and communication boundaries between services managed by separate teams or belonging to separate stakeholders. They can also segment production and non-production services within the Consul deployment. 

-> **Preexisting resource nodes and namespaces**: Admin partitions were introduced in Consul 1.11. Resource nodes were not namespaced prior to 1.11. After upgrading to Consul 1.11 or later, all resource nodes will be namespaced.

### Default Admin Partition

Each Consul cluster will have at least one default admin partition (named `default`). Any resource created without specifying an admin partition will inherit the partition of the ACL token.  

The `default` admin partition is special in that it may contain namespaces and other entities that are replicated between datacenters.

-> **Preexisting resources and the `default` partition**: Admin partitions were introduced in Consul 1.11. After upgrading to Consul 1.11 or later, the `default` partition will contain all resources created in previous versions.

### Naming Admin Partitions

Only characters that are valid in DNS names can be used to name admin partitions.
Names must also start with a letter.

### Namespaces

When an admin partition is created, it will include a `default` namespace. You can create additional namespaces within the partition. 

All namespaces must exist within an admin partition. By extension, the partition will also contain all namespaced resources. 

Within a single datacenter, a namespace in one admin partition is logically separate from any other namespace with the same name in other admin partitions. 

### Cross-datacenter Replication

Only resources in the default admin partition will be replicated to secondary datacenters.


### DNS Queries

Client agents will be configured to operate within a specific admin partition. The DNS interface will only return results for the admin partition within the scope of the client.  

### Service Mesh Configurations

Values specified for [`proxy-defaults`](docs/connect/config-entries/proxy-defaults) configurations are scoped to a specific partition. Services registered in the partition will use the partition's `proxy-defaults` values.

## Requirements

Your Consul configuration must meet the following requirements to use admin partitions.

### Versions  

* Consul 1.11.0 and newer

### Security Configurations

* The agent token used by the client agent will need to allow `node:write` in the admin partition. 
* The `write` permission for `proxy-defaults` requires `mesh:write`. See [Admin Partition Rules](/docs/security/acl/acl-rules#admin-partition-rules) for additional information.
* The `write` permissions for ingress and terminating gateways require `mesh:write` privileges.
* Wildcards (`*`) are not supported when creating intentions for admin partitions, but you can use a wildcard to specify services within a partition. 

### Agent Configurations

* In client agent configurations, the admin partition name should be specified in the agent configuration:

  ```hcl
  partition = "<NAME>"
  ```
* The anti-entropy sync will use the configured admin partition name when registering the node. 

### Kubernetes Requirements

One of the primary use cases for admin partitions is for enabling a service mesh on Kubernetes clusters. The following requirements must be met to create admin partitions on Kubernetes:

* Two or more Kubernetes clusters with Consul servers installed on one of them. The other clusters should run Consul clients. 
* A Consul Enterprise license must be installed on each instance of Consul. 
* The helm chart consul-k8s v0.34.1 or greater.
* Consul 1.11.0-ent-alpha or greater.
* All instances in the VPC must be able to communicate with each other. 
* Pods must be able to communicate with each other (flat pod and node network). See [step 3](#firewall-rules) in the Deploying Consul with Admin Partitions on Kubernetes section for additional information

## Usage

This section describes how to deploy Consul admin partitions to Kubernetes clusters, as well as directs you to the CLI reference for interacting with the admin partitions API on the command line.

### Deploying Consul with Admin Partitions on Kubernetes

The expected use case to create admin partitions on Kubernetes clusters. This is because many organizations prefer to use cloud-managed Kubernetes offerings to provision separate Kubernetes clusters for individual teams, business units, or environments. This is opposed to deploying a single, large Kubernetes cluster. When these organizations attempt to use a service mesh to enable cross-cluster activities, such as administration tasks and communication between nodes, they encounter problems.

The following procedure will result in different admin partitions in each Kubernetes cluster. The Consul clients running in the cluster with servers will be in the `default` partition. Another partition called `clients` will also be created. 

Verify that your Consul deployment meets the [Kubernetes Requirements](#kubernetes-requirements) before proceeding.

1. <a id="firewall-rules"/> Update the firewall rules to ensure the pod network is flat. The following example for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) describes how to create a firewall rule that allows all pod and node network traffic to talk to the server and workload nodegroups:
  
    1. Open the **VPC Network > Firewall** section and identify the rules associated with your clusters. The cluster name is a part of the rule.

     ![IP address ranges for GKE clusters](/img/admin-partitions/consul-admin-partitions-gke-cluster-1.png)
  
     ![IP address ranges for GKE clusters](/img/admin-partitions/consul-admin-partitions-gke-cluster-2.png)    
  
     The `gke-cluster-1-7b43116f-node` and `gke-cluster-2-48d3bee6-node` labels are the node names for the GKE clusters. 
    
     The `10.128.0.0/9` IP range represents the node IP network. The IP range of the node VMs in the clusters are within this range. 
       
     The `10.44.0.0/14` and `10.4.0.0/14` IP ranges are the pod IP ranges for the GKE clusters.
    
    1. Enter the `gke-cluster-1-7b43116f-node` and `gke-cluster-2-48d3bee6-node` node names in the target fields of the firewall rule.
    1. Enter the `10.128.0.0/9`, `10.44.0.0/14`, and `10.4.0.0/14` IP into the source fields. This will ensure that traffic from the nodes and the pods in each cluster can access the nodes and pods in the other.

    ![Configured GKE cluster firewall rule for Consul admin partitions](/img/admin-partitions/consul-admin-partitions-gke-firewall-rule.png)

1. Create the license secret in each cluster, e.g.:

  ```shell-session
kubectl create secret generic license --from-file=key=[license file path i.e. ./license.hclic]
  ```
  This step must also be completed for each workload cluster. 

1. Create a server configuration file to override the default Consul Helm chart settings:
  
  ```yaml
  global:
  enableConsulNamespaces: true
  tls:
    enabled: true
  image: hashicorp/consul-enterprise:1.11.0-ent-beta1
  adminPartitions:
    enabled: true
  server:
    exposeGossipAndRPCPorts: true
   enterpriseLicense:
     secretName: license
     secretKey: key
  connectInject:
   enabled: true
   transparentProxy:
    defaultEnabled: false
   consulNamespaces:
      mirroringK8S: true
  controller:
   enabled: true
  ```
    Note that the `transparentProxy` configuration is disabled. This is to enable multi-cluster networking.

1. Start the Consul server(s) using the custom configuration file:
  ```shell-session
    helm install server hashicorp/consul -f server.yaml
  ```
1. After the server starts, get the external IP address for partition service so that it can be added to the client configuration. The partition service is a `LoadBalancer` type. The IP address is where clients that across your partitions will communicate with servers in this cluster.  

  ```shell-session
  kubectl get service
  NAME                                  TYPE           CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)                                                                   AGE
  kubernetes                            ClusterIP      10.96.0.1        <none>            443/TCP                                                                   3m
  servers-consul-connect-injector-svc   ClusterIP      10.97.175.39     <none>            443/TCP                                                                   30s
  servers-consul-controller-webhook     ClusterIP      10.100.22.99     <none>            443/TCP                                                                   30s
  servers-consul-dns                    ClusterIP      10.103.43.20     <none>            53/TCP,53/UDP                                                             30s
  servers-consul-partition-service      LoadBalancer   10.111.255.152   35.192.119.38     8501:30643/TCP,8301:30466/TCP,8300:30657/TCP                              30s
  servers-consul-server                 ClusterIP      None             <none>            8501/TCP,8301/TCP,8301/UDP,8302/TCP,8302/UDP,8300/TCP,8600/TCP,8600/UDP   30s
  servers-consul-ui                     ClusterIP      10.106.240.55    <none>            443/TCP                                                                   30s

1. Create the workload configuration for client nodes in your cluster. Create a configuration for each admin partition. In the following example, the external IP address from the previous step has been applied:

  ```yaml
  global:
  enabled: false
  enableConsulNamespaces: true
  image: hashicorp/consul-enterprise:1.11.0-ent-beta1
  adminPartitions:
    enabled: true
    name: "clients" // partition name
  tls:
    enabled: true
    caCert:
      secretName: consul-consul-ca-cert
      secretKey: tls.crt
    caKey:
      secretName: consul-consul-ca-key
      secretKey: tls.key
  server:
    enterpriseLicense:
      secretName: license
      secretKey: key
  externalServers:
    enabled: true
    hosts: "35.192.119.38" # Insert External IP of LoadBalancer here 
    tlsServerName: server.dc1.consul
  client:
    enabled: true
    exposeGossipPorts: true
    join: "35.192.119.38"
  connectInject:
    enabled: true
    consulNamespaces:
     mirroringK8S: true
  controller:
    enabled: true

  ```

1. Copy the server certificate to the workload cluster.

  ```shell-session
  kubectl get secret server-consul-ca-cert --context server -o yaml | kubectl apply --context client -f -
  ```

1. Copy the server key to the workload cluster.
  
  ```shell-session  
  kubectl get secret consul-consul-ca-key --context server -o yaml | kubectl apply --context client -f -
  ```
1. Start the workload client clusters:

  ```shell-session
    helm install client hashicorp/consul -f client.yaml
  ```
 
### CLI Usage

You can use create and manage admin partitions through the CLI. Refer to the [admin partition CLI documentation](/commands/admin-partition) for details. 

## Known Limitations

* Gossip between nodes in different admin partitions must be constrained. You can accomplish this with through the use of [network segments](network-segments).
* Cross-partition communication is not currently supported. 