bitnami/consul
Bitnami container image for Consul
10M+
HashiCorp Consul is a tool for discovering and configuring services in your infrastructure.
Overview of HashiCorp Consul Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
docker run --name consul bitnami/consul:latest
You can find the available configuration options in the Environment Variables section.
Looking to use HashiCorp Consul in production? Try VMware Tanzu Application Catalog, the commercial edition of the Bitnami catalog.
Deploying Bitnami applications as Helm Charts is the easiest way to get started with our applications on Kubernetes. Read more about the installation in the Bitnami HashiCorp Consul Chart GitHub repository.
Bitnami containers can be used with Kubeapps for deployment and management of Helm Charts in clusters.
Non-root container images add an extra layer of security and are generally recommended for production environments. However, because they run as a non-root user, privileged tasks are typically off-limits. Learn more about non-root containers in our docs.
Starting December 10th 2024, only the latest stable branch of any container will receive updates in the free Bitnami catalog. To access up-to-date releases for all upstream-supported branches, consider upgrading to Bitnami Premium. Previous versions already released will not be deleted. They are still available to pull from DockerHub.
Please check the Bitnami Premium page in our partner Arrow Electronics for more information.
Dockerfile
linksLearn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page.
You can see the equivalence between the different tags by taking a look at the tags-info.yaml
file present in the branch folder, i.e bitnami/ASSET/BRANCH/DISTRO/tags-info.yaml
.
Subscribe to project updates by watching the bitnami/containers GitHub repo.
The recommended way to get the Bitnami HashiCorp Consul Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry.
docker pull bitnami/consul:latest
To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions in the Docker Hub Registry.
docker pull bitnami/consul:[TAG]
If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build
command. Remember to replace the APP
, VERSION
and OPERATING-SYSTEM
path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.
git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t bitnami/APP:latest .
If you remove the container all your data and configurations will be lost, and the next time you run the image the database will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed.
For persistence you should mount a volume at the /bitnami
path. The above examples define a docker volume namely consul_data
. The HashiCorp Consul application state will persist as long as this volume is not removed.
To avoid inadvertent removal of this volume you can mount host directories as data volumes. Alternatively you can make use of volume plugins to host the volume data.
docker run -v /path/to/consul-persistence:/bitnami bitnami/consul:latest
or using Docker Compose:
consul:
image: bitnami/consul:latest
volumes:
- /path/to/consul-persistence:/bitnami
NOTE: As this is a non-root container, the mounted files and directories must have the proper permissions for the UID
1001
.
Using Docker container networking, a different server running inside a container can easily be accessed by your application containers and vice-versa.
Containers attached to the same network can communicate with each other using the container name as the hostname.
Step 1: Create a network
docker network create consul-network --driver bridge
Step 2: Launch the HashiCorp Consul container within your network
Use the --network <NETWORK>
argument to the docker run
command to attach the container to the consul-network
network.
docker run --name consul-node1 --network consul-network bitnami/consul:latest
Step 3: Run another containers
We can launch another containers using the same flag (--network NETWORK
) in the docker run
command. If you also set a name to your container, you will be able to use it as hostname in your network.
When not specified, Docker Compose automatically sets up a new network and attaches all deployed services to that network. However, we will explicitly define a new bridge network named consul-network.
version: '2'
networks:
consul-network:
driver: bridge
services:
consul:
image: bitnami/consul:latest
networks:
- consul-network
ports:
- '8300:8300'
- '8301:8301'
- '8301:8301/udp'
- '8500:8500'
- '8600:8600'
- '8600:8600/udp'
Then, launch the containers using:
docker-compose up -d
This is the simplest way to run HashiCorp Consul with clustering configuration:
docker-compose.yml
Copy the snippet below into your docker-compose.yml to add a HashiCorp Consul server node to your cluster configuration.
version: '2'
services:
consul-node1:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
ports:
- '8300:8300'
- '8301:8301'
- '8301:8301/udp'
- '8500:8500'
- '8600:8600'
- '8600:8600/udp'
volumes:
- 'consul-node1_data:/bitnami'
Note: The value of the CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT should reflect the total number of nodes the cluster will have.
Update the definitions for nodes you want your HashiCorp Consul node cluster with. If it is a remote WAN node, use CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_WAN_ADDRESS
.
consul-node2:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
- CONSUL_ENABLE_UI=false
volumes:
- 'consul-node2_data:/bitnami'
consul-node3:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
- CONSUL_ENABLE_UI=false
volumes:
- 'consul-node3_data:/bitnami'
volumes:
consul-node1_data:
driver: local
consul-node2_data:
driver: local
consul-node3_data:
driver: local
The final docker-compose.yml
will look like this:
version: '2'
services:
consul-node1:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
ports:
- '8300:8300'
- '8301:8301'
- '8301:8301/udp'
- '8500:8500'
- '8600:8600'
- '8600:8600/udp'
volumes:
- 'consul-node1_data:/bitnami'
consul-node2:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
- CONSUL_ENABLE_UI=false
volumes:
- 'consul-node2_data:/bitnami'
consul-node3:
image: bitnami/consul
environment:
- CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT=3
- CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0
- CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE=true
- CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS=consul-node1
- CONSUL_ENABLE_UI=false
volumes:
- 'consul-node3_data:/bitnami'
volumes:
consul-node1_data:
driver: local
consul-node2_data:
driver: local
consul-node3_data:
driver: local
Customizable environment variables
Name | Description | Default Value |
---|---|---|
CONSUL_RPC_PORT_NUMBER | Consul RPC port number. | 8300 |
CONSUL_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER | Consul RPC port number. | 8500 |
CONSUL_DNS_PORT_NUMBER | Consul DNS port number. | 8600 |
CONSUL_DNS_PORT_NUMBER | Consul DNS port number. | 8600 |
CONSUL_AGENT_MODE | Consul agent mode. | server |
CONSUL_DISABLE_KEYRING_FILE | Disable keyring file in Consul. | false |
CONSUL_SERF_LAN_ADDRESS | LAN address for Serf daemon. | 0.0.0.0 |
CONSUL_SERF_LAN_PORT_NUMBER | LAN port for Serf daemon. | 8301 |
CONSUL_CLIENT_LAN_ADDRESS | LAN address for Consul clients. | 0.0.0.0 |
CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS | Consul node retry join address. | 127.0.0.1 |
CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_WAN_ADDRESS | Consul retry join WAN address. | 127.0.0.1 |
CONSUL_BIND_INTERFACE | Consul bind interface. | nil |
CONSUL_BIND_ADDR | Consul bind address. | nil |
CONSUL_ENABLE_UI | Enable User Interface in Consul. | true |
CONSUL_BOOTSTRAP_EXPECT | Expect bootstrap in Consul. | 1 |
CONSUL_RAFT_MULTIPLIER | Consul Raft multiplier. | 1 |
CONSUL_LOCAL_CONFIG | Consul local configuration. | nil |
CONSUL_GOSSIP_ENCRYPTION | Use gossip encryption in Consul. | no |
CONSUL_GOSSIP_ENCRYPTION_KEY | Base64-encoded Consul gossip private symmetric key. | nil |
CONSUL_DATACENTER | Consul datacenter name. | dc1 |
CONSUL_DOMAIN | Consul domain. | consul |
CONSUL_NODE_NAME | Consul domain name. | nil |
CONSUL_DISABLE_HOST_NODE_ID | Disable host node ID. | true |
Read-only environment variables
Name | Description | Value |
---|---|---|
CONSUL_BASE_DIR | Consul installation directory. | ${BITNAMI_ROOT_DIR}/consul |
CONSUL_CONF_DIR | Consul configuration directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/conf |
CONSUL_DEFAULT_CONF_DIR | Consul default configuration directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/conf.default |
CONSUL_BIN_DIR | Consul binary directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/bin |
CONSUL_CONF_FILE | Consul configuration file. | ${CONSUL_CONF_DIR}/consul.json |
CONSUL_ENCRYPT_FILE | Consul encrytion configuration file. | ${CONSUL_CONF_DIR}/encrypt.json |
CONSUL_LOCAL_FILE | Consul local configuration file. | ${CONSUL_CONF_DIR}/local.json |
CONSUL_LOG_DIR | Directory where Consul logs are stored. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/logs |
CONSUL_LOG_FILE | Consul log file. | ${CONSUL_LOG_DIR}/consul.log |
CONSUL_VOLUME_DIR | Consul persistence directory. | /bitnami/consul |
CONSUL_DATA_DIR | Consul directory where data is stored. | ${CONSUL_VOLUME_DIR} |
CONSUL_SSL_DIR | Consul SSL directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/certificates |
CONSUL_TMP_DIR | Consul temporary directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/tmp |
CONSUL_PID_FILE | Path to the PID file for Consul. | ${CONSUL_TMP_DIR}/consul.pid |
CONSUL_TEMPLATES_DIR | Consul templates directory. | ${CONSUL_BASE_DIR}/templates |
CONSUL_CONFIG_TEMPLATE_FILE | Consul configuration template file. | ${CONSUL_TEMPLATES_DIR}/consul.json.tpl |
CONSUL_ENCRYPT_TEMPLATE_FILE | Consul encrypt configuration template file. | ${CONSUL_TEMPLATES_DIR}/encrypt.json.tpl |
CONSUL_LOCAL_TEMPLATE_FILE | Consul local configuration template file. | ${CONSUL_TEMPLATES_DIR}/local.json.tpl |
CONSUL_INITSCRIPTS_DIR | Consul directory for init scripts. | /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d |
CONSUL_DAEMON_USER | Consul system user. | consul |
CONSUL_DAEMON_GROUP | Consul system group. | consul |
Specifying Environment Variables using Docker Compose
consul:
image: bitnami/consul:latest
environment:
- CONSUL_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER=8888
Specifying Environment Variables on the Docker command line
docker run -d -e CONSUL_HTTP_PORT_NUMBER=8888 --name consul bitnami/consul:latest
In order to load your own configuration files, you will have to make them available to the container. You can do it doing the following:
By default, the configuration of HashiCorp Consul is written to /opt/bitnami/consul/consul.json
file and persisted with the following content:
{
"datacenter":"dc1",
"domain":"consul",
"data_dir":"/opt/bitnami/consul/data",
"pid_file":"/opt/bitnami/consul/tmp/consul.pid",
"server":true,
"ui":true,
"bootstrap_expect":1,
"addresses": {
"http":"0.0.0.0"
},
"retry_join": ["127.0.0.1"],
"ports": {
"http":8500,
"dns":8600,
"serf_lan":8301,
"server":8300
},
"serf_lan":"0.0.0.0"
}
Configuring environment variables
Configuration can be added by passing the configuration in JSON format via the environment variable CONSUL_LOCAL_CONFIG
. Then consul will write a local.json
file in the HashiCorp Consul configuration directory. HashiCorp Consul will load all files within the configuration directory in alphabetical order, so ones with starting with higher letters will prevail.
docker run -d -e CONSUL_LOCAL_CONFIG='{
"datacenter":"us_west",
"server":true,
"enable_debug":true
}' \
--name consul bitnami/consul:latest
Mounting a volume
Check the [Persisting your data](# Persisting your application) section to add custom volumes to the HashiCorp Consul container
Specifies the secret key to use for encryption of HashiCorp Consul network traffic. This key must be 16-bytes that are Base64-encoded. The easiest way to create an encryption key is to use consul keygen
docker run --name consul bitnami/consul:latest consul keygen
This command will generate a keygen, that you can add to your Dockerfile, docker-compose or pass it via command line:
docker run -e CONSUL_GOSSIP_ENCRYPTION_KEY=YOUR_GENERATED_KEY --name consul bitnami/consul:latest
Deploying a Docker Compose file
consul:
image: bitnami/consul:latest
volumes:
- '/local/path/to/your/confDir:/opt/bitnami/consul/conf'
The container has a HashiCorp Consul configuration directory set up at /consul/config and the agent will load any configuration files placed here by binding a volume or by composing a new image and adding files. Alternatively, configuration can be added by passing the configuration JSON via environment variable CONSUL_LOCAL_CONFIG. If this is bind mounted then ownership will be changed to the consul user when the container starts.
The Bitnami consul Docker image sends the container logs to the stdout
. To view the logs:
docker logs consul
or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose logs consul
You can configure the containers logging driver using the --log-driver
option if you wish to consume the container logs differently. In the default configuration docker uses the json-file
driver.
Bitnami provides up-to-date versions of consul, including security patches, soon after they are made upstream. We recommend that you follow these steps to upgrade your container.
Step 1: Get the updated image
docker pull bitnami/consul:latest
or if you're using Docker Compose, update the value of the image property to
bitnami/consul:latest
.
Step 2: Stop and backup the currently running container
Stop the currently running container using the command
docker stop consul
or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose stop consul
Next, take a snapshot of the persistent volume /path/to/consul-persistence
using:
rsync -a /path/to/consul-persistence /path/to/consul-persistence.bkp.$(date +%Y%m%d-%H.%M.%S)
You can use this snapshot to restore the database state should the upgrade fail.
Step 3: Remove the currently running container
docker rm -v consul
or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose rm -v consul
Step 4: Run the new image
Re-create your container from the new image, restoring your backup if necessary.
docker run --name consul bitnami/consul:latest
or using Docker Compose:
docker-compose up consul
Decrease the size of the container. The configuration logic is now based on Bash scripts in the rootfs/
folder.
Also, some env var changes have been performed maintaining backward compatibility through aliases:
New value | Old value |
---|---|
CONSUL_ENABLE_UI | CONSUL_UI |
CONSUL_AGENT_MODE | CONSUL_SERVER_MODE |
CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN_ADDRESS | CONSUL_RETRY_JOIN |
root
user and the Consul daemon was started as the consul
user. From now on, both the container and the Consul daemon run as user 1001
. As a consequence, the data directory must be writable by that user. You can revert this behavior by changing USER 1001
to USER root
in the Dockerfile.docker-compose.yaml
Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes. For production-ready deployments, we highly recommend utilizing its associated Bitnami Helm chart.
If you detect any issue in the docker-compose.yaml
file, feel free to report it or contribute with a fix by following our Contributing Guidelines.
We'd love for you to contribute to this container. You can request new features by creating an issue or submitting a pull request with your contribution.
If you encountered a problem running this container, you can file an issue. For us to provide better support, be sure to fill the issue template.
Copyright © 2025 Broadcom. The term "Broadcom" refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.