I’m running a small Docker Swarm using Traefik to proxy requests to several backends. Currently I only have one Traefik instance on a single manager and want to add another manager with a Traefik instance for HA purposes.
To get started I looked through this example in the Traefik docs.
The example says to use Consul for cluster mode using LetsEncrypt certs, but I was wondering if I need to use Consul if using a purchased year-long cert?
The best I can tell, Consul is used to elect a leader to manage LetsEncrypt updates, but Consul has no role in managing instances for availability. So I could create the same configuration in local TOML files for the two instances rather then use Consul.
Am I wrong in this thinking?
I posed this question on the Traefik Slack channel and they verified that Consul's role in the documentation is for leader election in performing LetsEncrypt updates. If using a purchased cert, multiple instances with identical TOML configuration can be set up and they will all be available for use. In my case the entrypoints will be set in DNS round-robin load-balancing.