Note Click here for the current version of the Consul Associate certification.

A new version of HashiCorp's Networking Automation Certification is coming soon

Starting in 2024, cloud engineers will be able to use either version of the Consul Associate certification to verify their basic networking automation skills.

HashiCorp Certified: Consul Associate (003)

The Consul Associate 003 is an upcoming certification for site reliability engineers (SREs), solutions architects (SAs), DevOps professionals, or other cloud engineers who know HashiCorp Consul fundamentals and have the skills to build, secure, and maintain Consul. Candidates will be best prepared for this exam if they have professional experience using Consul in production, but performing the exam objectives in a personal demo environment may also be sufficient. This person understands available Consul Enterprise features and can differentiate between Enterprise and Community Edition.

Exam availability dates

Coming soon!

Which exam to take

The Consul Associate 002 certification is still relevant and will be accepted as validation of Consul knowledge until each individual badge’s expiration date. Receiving a Consul Associate 003 certification will not impact any existing Consul Associate 002 credentials, and a single candidate can hold both at the same time. However, either certification alone can be used to validate Consul knowledge at the associate level.

If you have studied for the Consul Associate 002 and are prepared to take it now, schedule and take your 002 exam at your earliest convenience.

If you are not ready to schedule and take your exam until early 2024, we advise studying for the 003 exam and taking that version of the exam after it launches in early 2024.

Content differences between exams

Coming soon!

Prerequisites

  • Containerization
  • Basic terminal skills
  • Load balancing architecture
  • Distributed systems knowledge
  • Basic security practices knowledge
  • OSI Model familiarity
  • Cloud & Platform awareness (AWS, Google, Azure, Kubernetes, VMs)

Product version tested

Consul 1.11 or higher

Preparing for the exam

Coming soon!

Renewing your Consul Associate certification

To renew your Consul Associate certification, you will need to take and pass the Consul Associate exam. Each version of the exam has its own version of the badge, so while your 002 badge may expire, having a current version of either 002 or 003 badge validates Consul knowledge at the associate level.

If you hold an unexpired Consul Associate 002 certification: You can take the exam again starting 18 months after your previous exam date. * Passing the 002 version of the exam with a current 002 badge will extend the lifespan of the existing 002 badge. * Passing the 003 version of the exam with a current 003 badge will create a new 003 badge.

If you hold an expired Consul Associate 002 certification: You are eligible to recertify at any time. When you pass either exam, you will receive a new, separate set of credentials with a new expiration date.

Exam details

Assessment Type Multiple choice
Format Online proctored
Duration 1 hour
Price $70.50 USD
plus locally applicable taxes and fees
Free retake not included
Language English
Expiration 2 years

Exam objectives

1 Understand the pillars of service networking
1a Understand how Consul discovers, tracks, and monitors the health of services
1b Explain how Consul secures service to service communication
1c Summarize how Consul controls access to services at point of entry
1d Discuss how Consul automates networking tasks
2 Describe Consul architecture
2a Identify Consul datacenter components including agents and communication protocols
2b Review Consul server high availability & scalability options
2c Differentiate between server agents and data plane components (client agents and Consul Dataplane)
2d Understand that Consul can run on multiple platforms
3 Deploy a single datacenter
3a Configure, bootstrap, and start Consul server agents
3b Configure and start Consul client agents
3c Configure and start Consul on Kubernetes
3d Explain Consul agent join methods and behavior
4 Register services and use service discovery
4a Interpret a service registration
4b Differentiate between service registration methods
4c Understand service health check configuration options and behaviors
4d Query Consul's service catalog via CLI, API, UI, and/or DNS, and interpret the results
4e Interpret & use prepared queries
5 Use Consul service mesh
5a Consider high level architecture & key benefits of Consul service mesh
5b Understand Consul service mesh intentions & when to use them
5c Apply proxy configuration options within Consul service mesh
6 Secure agent communication
6a Understand Consul security/threat model
6b Differentiate certificate types needed for TLS encryption
6c Interpret TLS encryption settings & intended use
6d Configure gossip encryption
7 Secure services with basic access control lists (ACLs)
7a Understand Consul ACL system components and usage
7b Create and configure ACL policies and tokens
7c Use ACL tokens to communicate securely with Consul services and agents
8 Secure and connect service mesh applications
8a Use Consul gateways to securely connect and access services into, out of, and within the service mesh
8b Understand how to enable communication between multiple Consul datacenters
9 Monitor Consul
9a Describe Consul service mesh observability
9b Review Consul datacenter observability
10 Operate and maintain Consul
10a Manage Consul servers
10b Maintain Consul communications security
10c Backup and restore Consul cluster state
10d Understand Consul datacenter troubleshooting options