Using Consul with Azure App Services

Question

I'd like to have all of my configuration settings all in one place for all of my azure web app services, as well as resources outside of Azure. Consul's key value store seems like it could be a good fit (I'm happy to hear other suggestions if something else fits better). From my admittedly limited understanding of Consul, each node requires an agent to be running in order to access to key value store.

Is this correct? If so, how can I do this, would it be via a continuous webjob in Azure? If not, how can I access the KV store without an agent?

Answer 1

You don't need Consul Agent to retrieve configuration for your application.

You can use library Winton.Extensions.Configuration.Consul. It introduces Configuration Provider (docs) which can be integrated within your application.

Here sample configuration (full sample project available here)

internal sealed class Program
{
    public static IHostBuilder CreateHostBuilder(string[] args)
    {
        return Host
            .CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
            .ConfigureWebHostDefaults(builder => builder.UseStartup<Startup>())
            .ConfigureAppConfiguration(
                builder =>
                {
                    builder
                        .AddConsul(
                            "appsettings.json",
                            options =>
                            {
                                options.ConsulConfigurationOptions =
                                    cco => { cco.Address = new Uri("http://consul:8500"); };
                                options.Optional = true;
                                options.PollWaitTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5);
                                options.ReloadOnChange = true;
                            })
                        .AddEnvironmentVariables();
                });
    }

    public static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        CreateHostBuilder(args).Build().Run();
    }
}

Your app configuration will be updated periodically.