// the find
kelseyhightower/consul-on-kubernetes
Running HashiCorp's Consul on Kubernetes
A tutorial repo from Kelsey Hightower showing how to run a 3-node Consul cluster on Kubernetes using a StatefulSet with TLS and gossip encryption. It's a learning reference, not a production-ready Helm chart or operator. The target audience is people who want to understand the moving parts before reaching for an abstraction.
Shows the full TLS setup manually — CA generation, cert signing, Kubernetes secrets — which most 'getting started' guides skip. Using a StatefulSet with a headless service is the right pattern for Consul and the YAML demonstrates it cleanly. Gossip encryption is included by default, not an afterthought. Kelsey Hightower's tutorials tend to be minimal and correct, and this one is.
Abandoned in 2018 — targets Consul 1.4.0-rc and Kubernetes 1.11, both ancient. The official HashiCorp Helm chart and Consul on Kubernetes operator have made this approach obsolete; you'd be doing manual work that tooling now handles. No ACL setup, so the cluster is open internally. No persistent volume configuration in the StatefulSet, meaning a pod restart loses data unless your cluster handles that elsewhere.