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Why are custom fields not supported in services in Consul?

I've found several circumstances where storing addition metadata regarding a specific service would be convenient however custom fields don't seem to be supported in the services API (Only the basic id, name, address, port). For example, a database name or a load balancer weighting.

I'm curious as to the design decision - is there a best practice this evangelizes or perhaps this is a future enhancement that could be made?

I understand that we one could use the KV store for extra info but it seems more convenient to bundle like-information together and not make multiple Consul lookups.

Solution

  • Metadata should go into the KV store. There are use cases as you describe. However, Consul is designed for the 95% of most common use cases (actual words of Armon Dadger, a Consul principle enginner). Arbitrary metadata lives just fine in the KV store.