Spring Cloud Consul Config over Spring Cloud Config

Question

I'm having a real tough time with this one. We want to use Spring Cloud Consul for service discovery and my colleges are pushing the idea to use Spring Cloud Consul Config over Spring Cloud Config, which I have already previously implemented for a related project. The thing is, Spring Cloud Config works great and has a seamless out-of-the-box version control conduit (git) for a dynamic centralized management of properties. In order to support this same functionality in Spring Cloud Consul Config it seems would require re-inventing the wheel already baked into Spring Cloud Config.

Does anyone have experience using both? Would it make sense to use both together? That is, have Spring Cloud Config Client pointing to a Spring Cloud Config Server for the more "static" environment properties (things that vary between dev, qa, stage, production both otherwise static) and Spring Cloud Consul Config for pure dynamic properties like service discovery?

Someone please correct me if I am wrong but from my understanding what I will need to do in order to support dynamic version control for "static" properties using Spring Cloud Consul Config, I would need some kind of conduit between say git and the physical "/config" directory of the running instance of each Spring Cloud Consul Config application instance :/

I have but this is an example of adding an external conduit. However, Spencer, if you are recommending it then I am intrigued and will take a more serious look at it. — Starlton
I took a harder look at git2consul. Although this is a poller configuration, unlike spring cloud config server that only attempts to pull new changes from git when a client makes a request, it's not a biggy... That said, the issue I am currently having is that I want to distribute to Consul a set of property files committed to git; however, if I do that, SCCC doesn't expand to individual properties like I would have assumed. I am guessing that the idea for SCCC is that each key/value maps to one property meaning I have to convert .properties file to individual key/values? — Starlton
Spencer, I see you've added support for storing property files as keys back in March and on top of that added integrated support with git2Consul... Awesome! — Starlton

Nicolas Lacombe Nicolas Lacombe · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-12T03:50:06

tl;dr: I use spring cloud config and spring cloud consul but not spring cloud consul config.

I did not use spring cloud consul config specifically since I am not using consul config, but I am using a spring cloud config server that register itself in consul and I have other microservices accessing the spring cloud config server through consul for service discovery. Both server and client uses spring cloud consul to register and discover the config server. And the config server and config clients both uses spring cloud config.

Here is my setup:

Spring Cloud Config Server

Dependencies:

org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-config-server
org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-discovery
org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator

bootstrap.properties:

spring.application.name=config-server
spring.cloud.consul.host=CONSUL_HOSTNAME
spring.cloud.consul.port=CONSUL_PORT

application.properties:

spring.cloud.config.server.git.uri=GIT_REPO_URL
spring.cloud.config.server.git.username=GIT_REPO_USERNAME
spring.cloud.config.server.git.password=GIT_REPO_PASSWORD

Application.java:

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableConfigServer
@EnableDiscoveryClient
public class Application
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class);
    }
}

Spring Cloud Client Application

Dependencies:

org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-config
org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-discovery
org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web
org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator

bootstrap.properties:

spring.application.name=client-app-name
spring.cloud.consul.host=CONSUL_HOSTNAME
spring.cloud.consul.port=CONSUL_PORT
spring.cloud.config.discovery.enabled=true
spring.cloud.config.discovery.serviceId=config-server

Application.java:

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableDiscoveryClient
public class Application
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class);
    }
}

Spring Cloud Consul Config over Spring Cloud Config

2 Answers