Overview

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Master the fundamentals of HashiCorp Consul and prepare for the Consul Associate certification with this comprehensive course. You'll gain expertise in Consul's architecture, service discovery, service mesh, network automation, and security features, ensuring you're well-prepared for real-world implementation and the certification exam. The course begins with an introduction to Consul's core concepts, including its consensus and gossip protocols, network traffic, and high availability configurations. You'll then dive into hands-on labs covering the deployment of a single datacenter, service registration, health checks, and service discovery, equipping you with practical skills to manage Consul in production environments. Next, you'll explore the Consul Key/Value (KV) store, backup and restore procedures, and service proxy registration. The course also covers security essentials, including secure agent communication, ACLs, TLS encryption, and gossip encryption, ensuring that your Consul environment remains protected and resilient. This course is designed for DevOps engineers, cloud architects, and system administrators looking to enhance their expertise in service networking. A basic understanding of networking, Linux, and infrastructure-as-code concepts is recommended. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced professional, this course will provide you with the skills needed to pass the Consul Associate certification exam.

Syllabus

Course Introduction

In this module, we will provide an overview of the course, outlining the learning objectives, training format, and key topics. You will also gain insights into what to expect from the certification exam, helping you align your learning journey with your goals.

Objective 1: Explain Consul Architecture

In this module, we will explore the foundational architecture of HashiCorp Consul, covering key concepts such as service discovery, service mesh, and network automation. We will also dive into technical aspects like the Raft consensus protocol, Serf gossip protocol, scaling strategies, and high availability configurations to ensure optimal performance and resilience.

Objective 2: Deploy a Single Datacenter

In this module, we will walk through the process of deploying a single Consul datacenter, starting from installation and configuration to managing agents within a cluster. We will cover essential networking settings, agent configurations, and hands-on labs to ensure you can effectively set up and maintain a functional Consul environment.

Objective 3: Register Services and Use Service Discovery

In this module, we will explore how to register services within Consul, define service configurations, and enable health checks to ensure service reliability. We will also cover querying service status using different Consul interfaces and introduce prepared queries to enhance service discovery. Hands-on labs will reinforce these concepts by guiding you through service registration, health checks, and query execution.

Objective 4: Access the Consul Key/Value (KV)

In this module, we will explore Consul’s key/value store and its role in dynamic configuration management. You will learn how to store, retrieve, and monitor data changes using built-in tools like Consul Watch, envconsul, and consul-template. Hands-on labs will provide practical experience in integrating these tools with your applications to automate configuration updates.

Objective 5: Backup and Restore

In this module, we will explore how to back up and restore a Consul cluster using snapshots. You will learn how to manually create and restore snapshots, as well as automate this process using the Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise). Hands-on labs will guide you through practical implementations to ensure data integrity and disaster recovery readiness.

Objective 6: Register a Service Proxy

In this module, we will dive into Consul Service Mesh, exploring its core components and functionality. You will learn how to register a service proxy, implement service mesh intentions to control traffic flow, and use different Consul interfaces to manage these configurations. A hands-on lab will reinforce these concepts by guiding you through practical service mesh deployments.

Objective 7: Secure Agent Communication

In this module, we will explore the security mechanisms in Consul, focusing on its threat model, required TLS certificates, and encryption settings. You will learn how to configure secure communication between agents, ensuring a resilient and protected Consul deployment.

Objective 8: Secure Services with Basic ACLs

In this module, we will explore Consul’s Access Control List (ACL) system, a critical component for securing your environment. You will learn how to create and manage ACL policies and tokens, and how to authenticate using the Consul UI, CLI, and API. Hands-on labs will reinforce these concepts, guiding you through enabling ACLs, setting up policies, and securing access to Consul services.

Objective 9: Use Gossip Encryption

In this final module, we will explore gossip encryption, a crucial security feature that protects communication between Consul agents. You will learn how to configure and implement encryption in your environment, as well as manage encryption keys to ensure ongoing security. Hands-on labs will provide practical experience in securing your Consul cluster on an untrusted network.