Consul tips and tricks for cloud transformation at HashiConf 2023

HashiConf 2023 brought together tech enthusiasts, developers, and IT professionals from around the world to explore the latest innovations in identity-driven security and infrastructure automation. Among the many insightful sessions and talks, Consul, HashiCorp's service networking tool, had its share of the announcements and a spotlight in the opening keynote. Here's a recap of some key sessions focused on Consul. We’ve included surveys for each session to solicit feedback on Consul so our R&D team can prioritize features your team cares most about.

»Migrating on-prem services to the cloud with HCP Consul

Session survey link: hashi.co/hcp-consul

In this session, attendees received practical advice on how to leverage HCP Consul for migrating on-premises services to the cloud, expanding cloud footprint to hybrid and multi-cloud, and adopting new technologies such as containers and serverless platforms. The discussion delved into common architectural patterns that incorporate HCP Consul and outlined a shared responsibility model for operations, designed to reduce overhead within organizations. The talk also emphasized the seamless transition from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, all facilitated by HCP Consul.

»Robust microservices with Consul service mesh

What features would you like to see in Consul service mesh?: http://hashi.co/service-mesh

This talk focused on how platform providers can deliver robust microservice "review app" functionality by utilizing Consul service mesh. It explored techniques to logically isolate one or more applications for testing purposes using service resolvers, routers, and namespaces. This approach allows engineers to safely test changes while maintaining access to upstream and downstream dependencies, all without the overhead of creating an entire review environment.

»Deep observability insights at any scale with Consul [Learn Lab]

• Session survey link: hashi.co/consul-observability
• Session tutorial link: https://hashi.co/consul-lab-hashiconf-2023

This Learn Lab delved into Consul's observability features, highlighting how they enable users to monitor their service mesh comprehensively. Attendees learned how to enhance service performance and precision debugging of distributed services through Consul observability. A hands-on Learn Lab demonstrated troubleshooting a demo app using Consul, which included access logging and proxy metrics for deeper insights into services.

»Learn more

The prevailing trend at HashiConf 2023 highlights the significant shift toward multi-cloud workloads. This transition underscores the vital role of networking tools such as Consul, enabling platform teams to seamlessly oversee service connectivity and security across any runtime, platform or cloud. It's about simplifying application network management without the need for explicit infrastructure handling.

• Learn more in the Consul documentation.
• Get started with HCP Consul