github.imxd.top/hashicorp/consul@v1.4.5/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.