github.com/sl1pm4t/consul@v1.4.5-0.20190325224627-74c31c540f9c/README.md (about)

     1  # Consul [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/consul.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/consul) [![Join the chat at https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby](https://badges.gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby.svg)](https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge)
     2  
     3  * Website: https://www.consul.io
     4  * Chat: [Gitter](https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby)
     5  * Mailing list: [Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/group/consul-tool/)
     6  
     7  Consul is a tool for service discovery and configuration. Consul is
     8  distributed, highly available, and extremely scalable.
     9  
    10  Consul provides several key features:
    11  
    12  * **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
    13    themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
    14    External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.
    15  
    16  * **Health Checking** - Health Checking enables Consul to quickly alert
    17    operators about any issues in a cluster. The integration with service
    18    discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
    19    level circuit breakers.
    20  
    21  * **Key/Value Storage** - A flexible key/value store enables storing
    22    dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and
    23    more. The simple HTTP API makes it easy to use anywhere.
    24  
    25  * **Multi-Datacenter** - Consul is built to be datacenter aware, and can
    26    support any number of regions without complex configuration.
    27  
    28  * **Service Segmentation** - Consul Connect enables secure service-to-service 
    29  communication with automatic TLS encryption and identity-based authorization.
    30  
    31  Consul runs on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. A commercial
    32  version called [Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul)
    33  is also available.
    34  
    35  **Please note**: We take Consul's security and our users' trust very seriously. If you 
    36  believe you have found a security issue in Consul, please [responsibly disclose](https://www.hashicorp.com/security#vulnerability-reporting) by 
    37  contacting us at security@hashicorp.com.
    38  
    39  ## Quick Start
    40  
    41  An extensive quick start is viewable on the Consul website:
    42  
    43  https://www.consul.io/intro/getting-started/install.html
    44  
    45  ## Documentation
    46  
    47  Full, comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Consul website:
    48  
    49  https://www.consul.io/docs
    50  
    51  ## Contributing
    52  
    53  Thank you for your interest in contributing! Please refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/blob/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidance.