HashiCorp Certified - Consul Associate Course

HashiCorp Certified - Consul Associate Course

by Bryan Krausen
Released April 2023
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781805128861

Watch it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Video description

This HashiCorp Consul video course covers a comprehensive range of objectives to help you gain a deeper understanding of Consul architecture, its deployment, and its services.

This course starts with an introduction to the course that describes the objectives of the course and the topics covered. It also explains the fundamental principles of Consul architecture; this course covers deploying a single data center and registering services using service discovery. You will learn how to use Consul Key/Value (KV) to store and manage configurations and data. You will also learn about backup and restore procedures, which will enable you to recover your data in case of a disaster.

In addition, you will learn how to register a service proxy, which will allow you to access your service without exposing the underlying infrastructure. You will also learn how to secure agent communication and services with basic access control lists (ACLs) to ensure that only authorized users have access to your data. Finally, you will learn how to use gossip encryption to secure your data in transit.

By the end of this course, you will have the necessary skills and knowledge to pass the Consul Associate exam.

What You Will Learn

  • Learn network automation and service discovery
  • Learn differences between voting and non-voting servers
  • Add or remove Consul Agents from the cluster
  • Monitor changes using Consul Watch
  • Manage Consul Service Mesh Intentions
  • Perform CLI requests using a token

Audience

This content is relevant for DevOps engineers, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), cloud networking architects interested in network automation, and developers seeking to improve microservice communication. It requires a foundational understanding of containerization and basic terminal skills.

About The Author

Bryan Krausen: Bryan Krausen is an IT consultant with over 20 years of experience in enterprise IT. He specializes in Amazon Web Services and HashiCorp tools. Bryan focuses on cloud design and facilitates customer workshops that define business and technical requirements to allow businesses to deliver applications on the AWS cloud platform. He was the first individual to earn the HashiCorp Vault Expert partner certification.

Bryan has deployed and assisted with adopting the HashiCorp Vault into many Fortune 1000 companies. He delivers lectures at community events, such as HashiConf (2019 to 2022), HashiTalks (2019 to 2020), and many HashiCorp user groups across the mid-west and eastern US.

Table of contents

  1. Chapter 1 : Course Introduction
    1. Course Introduction
  2. Chapter 2 : Objective 1: Explain Consul Architecture
    1. Objective 1 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to HashiCorp Consul
    3. Service Discovery
    4. Service Mesh
    5. Network Automation
    6. Service Configuration
    7. Basic Consul Architecture
    8. Consensus Protocol (Raft)
    9. Gossip Protocol (Serf)
    10. Network Traffic and Ports
    11. Consul High Availability
    12. Scaling for Performance
    13. Voting Versus Non-Voting Servers
    14. Redundancy Zones
    15. Consul Autopilot
    16. Objective 1 - Section Recap
  3. Chapter 3 : Objective 2: Deploy a Single Datacenter
    1. Objective 2 - Section Overview
    2. Start the Consul Process
    3. Lab Session - Starting the Consul Process - Using Dev Mode
    4. Manage the Consul Process
    5. Consul Agent Configuration
    6. Lab Session - Creating a Consul Agent Configuration
    7. Configure Networking and Ports
    8. Adding/Removing Consul Agents to the Cluster
    9. Lab Session - Adding and Removing Consul Agents
    10. Objective 2 - Section Recap
  4. Chapter 4 : Objective 3: Register Services and Use Service Discovery
    1. Objective 3 - Section Overview
    2. Registering a Consul Service
    3. Creating a Service Definition
    4. Lab Session - Service Definition and Registration
    5. Configuring Service Health Checks
    6. Lab Session - Working with Health Checks
    7. Check Service Status from the Catalog
    8. Lab Session - Check Service Status from the Catalog
    9. Introduction to Prepared Queries
    10. Lab Session - Prepared Queries
    11. Objective 3 - Section Recap
  5. Chapter 5 : Objective 4: Access the Consul Key/Value (KV)
    1. Objective 4 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to Consul K/V Store
    3. Interacting with Consul K/V
    4. Lab Session - Working with the Consul K/V
    5. Using Consul Watch to Monitor Changes
    6. Using envconsul
    7. Lab Session - Using Envconsul to Monitor Changes to Consul K/V
    8. Using consul-template
    9. Lab Session - Using Consul-Template to Monitor Changes to Consul K/V
    10. Objective 4 - Section Recap
  6. Chapter 6 : Objective 5: Backup and Restore
    1. Objective 5 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to Consul Snapshots
    3. Using Consul Snapshots
    4. Lab Session - Consul Snapshots
    5. Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise)
    6. Lab Session - Using the Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise)
    7. Objective 5 - Section Recap
  7. Chapter 7 : Objective 6: Register a Service Proxy
    1. Objective 6 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to Consul Service Mesh
    3. Registering a Service Proxy
    4. Introduction to Consul Service Mesh Intentions
    5. Managing Consul Service Mesh Intentions
    6. Lab Session - Service Mesh
    7. Objective 6 - Section Recap
  8. Chapter 8 : Objective 7: Secure Agent Communication
    1. Objective 7 - Section Overview
    2. Consul Security/Threat Model
    3. Certificates Required in Consul
    4. TLS Encryption Settings
    5. Objective 7 - Section Recap
  9. Chapter 9 : Objective 8: Secure Services with Basic ACLs
    1. Objective 8 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to the Consul ACL System
    3. Lab Session - Enable and Configure the Consul ACL System
    4. Creating ACL Policies
    5. Lab Session - Creating ACL Policies
    6. Creating and Managing ACL Tokens
    7. Lab Session - Creating ACL Tokens
    8. Perform a UI task Using a Token
    9. Lab Session - Using Tokens with the Consul UI
    10. Perform a CLI Request Using a Token
    11. Lab Session - Using Tokens with the Consul CLI
    12. Perform an API Request Using a Token
    13. Lab Session - Using Tokens with the Consul API
    14. Objective 8 - Section Recap
  10. Chapter 10 : Objective 9: Use Gossip Encryption
    1. Objective 9 - Section Overview
    2. Introduction to Gossip Encryption
    3. Configure Gossip Encryption
    4. Lab Session - Configure Gossip Encryption
    5. Manage the Lifecycle of Encryption Keys
    6. Lab Session - Managing the Lifecycle of Encryption Keys
    7. Objective 9 - Section Recap

Product information

  • Title: HashiCorp Certified - Consul Associate Course
  • Author(s): Bryan Krausen
  • Release date: April 2023
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781805128861