Consul-template: [doc] Recommend approach for multiple environments

[scalp42]

I'm in the process of migrating to Consul and I was wondering what was the correct approach for this scenario:

• a single consul cluster
• multiple environments (prod, dev etc)

The possible ways:

• should services rely heavily on tags to differentiate them ? prod.myservice.service.consul (which would lead to filtering with byTag )
• use the datacenter concept so you can specifically query in consul-template ? `{{services "@prod"}}
• rely on the node name and split on it, assuming a node name myservice-prod-i4252

I know DCs are not replicated out of the box but I'm assuming it should not matter in that case.

Any insight would be welcomed, thanks in advance.

[sethvargo]

Hey @scalp42

Thank you for opening an issue. I think this is a really great question, but I think the mailing list is a much better place to facilitate this discussion and get the community involved since it's not an entirely Consul Template-specific question :smile:. Would you mind posting on the mailing list please? I can provide my personal recommendation there, but I think it would also help if you heard the strategies that other organizations are using with the multi-environment approach.

The Consul mailing list is a Google group at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/consul-tool. Again, I am sorry to push you there, but I think that's a much better place to have this discussion :smile:.

[scalp42]

Fair enough, I will @sethvargo :smiley:

[scalp42]

Opened https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/consul-tool/0P_27-j3SYQ

[abcfy2]

Hi @scalp42 . I have the same use case. Would you mind to tell me what's your solution ?

I also have multiple environments (prod, dev etc), with a single consul cluster, how to distinguish different environments ? (Such as different environments have different database host, port, password, and so on.)

[scalp42]

@abcfy2 We ended up using tags to differentiate multiple environments, was the least painful solution for us 😄

[abcfy2]

Thank you.