HashiCorp has announced the general availability of Consul 1.19, introducing several improvements to its service networking platform. The latest version focuses on enhancing user experience, providing greater flexibility, and strengthening integration capabilities.
One of the key updates in Consul 1.19 is the introduction of a new "Registration" custom resource definition (CRD) for Kubernetes. This feature simplifies registering external services into the Consul service mesh. Previously, operators had to follow a three-step process involving Consul's catalogue APIs, access control list (ACL) policy assignment, and termination gateway configuration. The new Registration CRD streamlines this workflow, offering a Kubernetes-native method for service registration and automatic updating of terminating gateway ACLs.
This new CRD compares favourably with similar functionality in products such as Istio, which has a "ServiceEntry" CRD, and Linkerd which has "ExternalWorkload" for access to external services.
Consul Enterprise users will also benefit from enhanced snapshot capabilities in version 1.19. The snapshot agent now supports saving Consul snapshots to multiple destinations simultaneously. This improvement allows organizations to implement robust backup strategies, potentially improving recovery time objectives. Supported storage options include local paths, NFS mounts, SAN attached storage, and cloud object storage services like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Microsoft Azure Blob storage.
Consul 1.19 also significantly improves its integration with HashiCorp Nomad, the company's cluster orchestrator. The update introduces support for Consul API gateway deployment on Nomad, enabling external clients to access services within the mesh. This feature facilitates load balancing, HTTP header modification, and traffic splitting based on weighted ratios.
Additionally, Consul's transparent proxy feature is now available for Nomad environments. This simplifies service mesh adoption by automatically routing traffic to upstream services without requiring developers to modify their application configurations.
For enterprise users, Consul 1.19 extends admin partition support to Nomad. This feature enables multi-tenancy, allowing different teams to manage their application services autonomously while sharing the same Consul and Nomad control planes. Admin partitions aim to reduce management overhead and improve cost efficiency at scale.
HashiCorp has made documentation available for the new features, including guides on using the Registration CRD and deploying Consul API gateway on Nomad. The company encourages users to explore these new capabilities through their tutorials for both beginners and advanced users. Interested users can test commercial features like the snapshot agent and admin partitions through free trials of HCP Consul or self-managed Consul Enterprise.