I want to congratulate the HashiCorp and Microsoft Azure teams on the general availability of HashiCorp Consul Service (HCS) on Azure. This is a first-of-a-kind achievement for HashiCorp running a cloud-based service. Within Azure, we have a deep commitment to build a platform where anyone from startups to large-scale enterprises can deliver reliable, compelling services that augment the Azure platform and benefit our customers.

Throughout the process of bringing this service to production-grade availability, the HashiCorp team has been an awesome partner. We learned a lot together and I’m grateful for the strength of our relationship. Seeing HCS launch on Azure is awesome and a great example of the depth of our collaboration and commitment to serve our joint customers.

HCS on Azure enables Azure users to natively provision Consul servers in any supported Azure region directly through the Azure Marketplace. Consul is delivered “as-a-service” where the Consul servers themselves are managed and operated by HashiCorp SREs while Azure takes care of the underlying infrastructure, virtual machines (VMs), and networks. This ensures customers can focus on the application and business logic they’re building and can offload the operational overhead of running Consul to experts at HashiCorp, including managing upgrades, patching, and providing technical support.

One of the major challenges of adopting open source technology like Consul is learning how to operate it yourself. This new HCS service eliminates this barrier. You can experiment and prototype with an open source solution and go to production with the confidence of the managed service offering.

Consul is a great option for service discovery and service mesh, especially in hybrid environments connecting the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to legacy services running on VMs, or even in on-premises environments. You can secure traffic between components, perform health checking, and even implement access control to on-premises resources with a single solution that also integrates with modern cloud-native services running in Kubernetes.

Because HCS is offered as an Azure managed application, it is integrated with all native Azure experiences. You can create a cluster with a push-button experience in the Azure portal, pay for the service using centralized Azure billing and spending commitments, and integrate identity management with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Because of the native platform integration, it’s super easy to integrate HashiCorp Consul with AKS through Helm and the Service Mesh Interface. You can even deploy AKS and Consul using the same HashiCorp Terraform template.

I have always said that it is an open ecosystem that powers the success of a platform, whether that is Kubernetes or Azure. Today’s launch is a great example of how we’re making that vision a reality with fantastic partners like HashiCorp.  Many congratulations and thanks to the HashiCorp and Azure teams!

To learn more and get started, visit HashiCorp Consul Service on Azure.