consul Announcing Consul 1.17 beta and HCP Consul Central

[Hashicorp]

Today at HashiConf, we are introducing a number of significant enhancements for HashiCorp Consul, our service networking solution that helps users discover and securely connect any application. We're also formally introducing HCP Consul Central, previously known as the management plane for HCP Consul. These new capabilities help organizations enhance workflow management, increase reliability and scale, and bolster security for operators as they leverage a cloud operating model for service networking.

Some of the notable updates include:

• Multi-port support (beta): a new, simplified way to onboard modern distributed applications that require different ports for various traffic types for intricate client-server communication
• Locality-aware service mesh routing within a Consul datacenter: optimizes traffic routing within datacenters, prioritizing local instances for lower latency and reduced costs.
• Sameness groups (GA): simplifies multi-cluster operations, enhancing service reliability for enterprises.
• HCP Consul Central: introduces observability features for HashiCorp-managed and linked self-managed clusters, enhancing cluster health monitoring. Additionally, a global API simplifies integration with HCP Consul Central, allowing platform operators to streamline workflows and access cluster details.

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