Setting up a Simple Cluster

Terminology

Datacenter : This is defined by your design. It should ideally be a set of nodes that have low latency connections between them and are part of a private network.

Agent: Any Consul process is an agent. It can run in one of two modes - server and client.

Server : A Consul process that maintains cluster state, responds to RPC queries from clients, elects leaders using the Raft consensus protocol and participates in WAN gossip between datacenters.

Client : A stateless Consul process that accepts queries from applications and forwards them to server nodes.