Hashicorp Consul

This repository is only a mirror. Development and testing is done on a private gitlab server.

This role install and configure consul on debian-based distributions.

Requirements

None.

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, along with default values. A sample file for the default values is available in default/hashicorp_consul.yml.sample in case you need it for any group_vars or host_vars configuration.

hashi_consul_install: true # by default, set to true

This variable defines if the consul package is to be installed or not before configuring. If you install consul using another task, you can set this to false.

hashi_consul_start_service: true

This variable defines if the consul service should be started once it has been configured. This is usefull in case you're using this role to build golden images, in which case you might want to only enable the service, to have it start on the next boot (when the image is launched)

hashi_consul_version: latest # by default, set to latest

This variable specifies the version of consul to install when hashi_consul_install is set to true. The version to specify is the version of the package on the hashicorp repository (1.14.1-1 for example).

hashi_consul_deploy_method: host # by default, set to host

This variable defines the method of deployment of consul. The host method installs the binary directly on the host, and runs consul as a systemd service. The docker method install consul as a docker container.

Currently, only the host method is available, the docker method will be added later.

hashi_consul_server_enable: true # by default, set to true
hashi_consul_connect_enable: false # by default, set to false
hashi_consul_acl_enabled: false # by default, set to false

These variables enable or disable the server, service mesh and acl functions or consul.

hashi_consul_server:

This variable sets a bunch of configuration parameters for consul. For more information on all of them, please check the documentation. I try to name them the same as in the configuration file, so that it is easier to search for it. Most of the defaults in the role are the default values of consul, however, some might differ.

hashi_consul_server_ports:

This variable sets up all of the ports used for consul communications. They default to the consul default values.

hashi_consul_client:

This variable is the list of servers to try to join on startup for agents. This only applies to agents, not servers (see hashi_consul_server['retry_join'] for servers).

hashi_consul_acl:

This variable sets a bunch of settings regarding the ACLs in consul. YOU NEED TO EDIT IT if you decide to enable ACLs on the cluster (you might want to look into lookup plugins to fetch tokens from a secret manager, like vault or bitwarden).

Dependencies

This role requires both ednxzu.manage_repositories and ednxzu.manage_apt_packages to install consul. If you already installed consul, you can set hashi_consul_install to false, and that'll remove the dependencies.

Example Playbook

Including an example of how to use your role (for instance, with variables passed in as parameters) is always nice for users too:

# calling the role inside a playbook with either the default or group_vars/host_vars
- hosts: servers
  roles:
    - ednxzu.hashicorp_consul

License

MIT / BSD

Author Information

This role was created by Bertrand Lanson in 2023.