README.md
1# Consul [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/consul.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/hashicorp/consul) [![Join the chat at https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby](https://badges.gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby.svg)](https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby?utm_source=badge&utm_medium=badge&utm_campaign=pr-badge&utm_content=badge)
2
3* Website: https://www.consul.io
4* Chat: [Gitter](https://gitter.im/hashicorp-consul/Lobby)
5* Mailing list: [Google Groups](https://groups.google.com/group/consul-tool/)
6
7Consul is a tool for service discovery and configuration. Consul is
8distributed, highly available, and extremely scalable.
9
10Consul provides several key features:
11
12* **Service Discovery** - Consul makes it simple for services to register
13 themselves and to discover other services via a DNS or HTTP interface.
14 External services such as SaaS providers can be registered as well.
15
16* **Health Checking** - Health Checking enables Consul to quickly alert
17 operators about any issues in a cluster. The integration with service
18 discovery prevents routing traffic to unhealthy hosts and enables service
19 level circuit breakers.
20
21* **Key/Value Storage** - A flexible key/value store enables storing
22 dynamic configuration, feature flagging, coordination, leader election and
23 more. The simple HTTP API makes it easy to use anywhere.
24
25* **Multi-Datacenter** - Consul is built to be datacenter aware, and can
26 support any number of regions without complex configuration.
27
28* **Service Segmentation** - Consul Connect enables secure service-to-service
29communication with automatic TLS encryption and identity-based authorization.
30
31Consul runs on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Windows. A commercial
32version called [Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/products/consul)
33is also available.
34
35**Please note**: We take Consul's security and our users' trust very seriously. If you
36believe you have found a security issue in Consul, please [responsibly disclose](https://www.hashicorp.com/security#vulnerability-reporting) by
37contacting us at security@hashicorp.com.
38
39## Quick Start
40
41An extensive quick start is viewable on the Consul website:
42
43https://www.consul.io/intro/getting-started/install.html
44
45## Documentation
46
47Full, comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Consul website:
48
49https://www.consul.io/docs
50
51## Contributing
52
53Thank you for your interest in contributing! Please refer to [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/blob/master/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) for guidance.