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HashiCorp Consul vs. Microsoft Azure Key Vault

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Consul

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/AHashiCorp Consul is a tool for discovering and configuring services in the IT infrastructure. It provides service discovery, health checking, key/value stores and support for multiple data centers out of the box.

    $0

    always free

    Azure Key Vault

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's Azure Key Vault allows users to safeguard cryptographic keys and other secrets used by cloud apps and services. Azure Key Vault can be used to encrypt keys and small secrets like passwords that use keys stored in hardware security modules (HSMs).N/A
    Pricing
    ConsulAzure Key Vault
    Editions & Modules
    Open Source (self-managed)
    $0
    always free
    HCP Consul (Cloud)
    $0.027/hr
    Per Hour
    Enterprise
    Self-Managed Custom Deployments
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    ConsulAzure Key Vault
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    User Ratings
    ConsulAzure Key Vault
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.8
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    ConsulAzure Key Vault
    Likelihood to Recommend
    IBM
    Consul can provide a light-weight, lightning-fast and robust solution for the following:
    • Network mesh
    • Service DNS
    • Global key-value store (values can be complex objects as well)
    • Utility for blue-green deployments
    • Service health checking
    Consul can be used in any or a combination of these scenarios. Regardless if you are a network administrator or a regular software engineer, Consul can add value to your work.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    You can back up many local keys in Microsoft Azure Key Vault, easy to set up permission. It helps your information protection task. Integration with local systems is also possible with some solutions. If you are using old systems, you may not get the full benefit of Microsoft Azure Key Vault. But I recommend to try it.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    IBM
    • Key-Value database management.
    • Service discovery.
    • Centralized configuration database with native high availability.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Cons
    IBM
    • The GUI: The GUI interface for Consul has gotten a lot better over the years. Since Consul is so easy to interact with via API, this isn't a showstopper, but for those that are less command line inclined it's always nice to be able to refer them to an easy to use and understand web interface
    • It's chatty: Consul is extremely chatty. Sometimes it's particularly chatty at 2am with no indication as to why and eats up quite a bit of resources. Just be sure to provision your systems that typically take a heavy load with a little extra for Consul
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    IBM
    Consul's API is extremely user friendly. While their web interface isn't quite as "mature", it's still pretty easily navigated for the average person. Together they make a pretty easy to pick up and use tool.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    It is easy to use. The cost of this service is quite low, so don't worry about it. It is very easy to use because you can store keys in a variety of ways. It would be very nice to have the ability to automatically remind the person in charge of the key expiration date.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    IBM
    I've never used paid support from HashiCorp, but I consider its support a good one, since they provide a lot of free resources for the community and there are good user groups supporting you on several sorts of issues. Also, HashiCorp is known as a company with a strong relationship with the community, that is easily noticed by the events HashiCorp promotes over the world.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    How to use Microsoft Azure Key Vault is available in Micrsoft tech net or various internet tech sites. If you have a question, you can use support from pages in Azure. Onece you request, you will get call or e-mail from Microsoft. Public information referrals and service bugs will be handled free of charge
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    IBM
    Consul was easier to configure out of the box than Serf and gave us more initial options. Its easy to use tools and support were by far superior to Serf in many ways. Support alone was one of those areas that Serf could take an example from Consul to keep its customers happy.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    IBM
    • It contains a native web UI, which in contrast to its counterparts, is handy, very intuitive and - most importantly - very informative. It leaves no room for doubt about your services "forest" health. So, for that purpose, the learning curve was almost down to non-existent. Our team managed to work seamlessly with Consul being our services API
    • Our management staff had a difficult time understanding what Consul was really all about. For technical staff it is pretty simple to understand the huge value such a tool can pose to our suite of solutions, but once our management staff took the grasp of its valuable handy set of tools, we didn't take long to start using it and keeping track of our Swarm overall health, with was a constant concern for the entire company before.
    • For load balancing purposes, we were relying pretty much on guesses before we decided to use Consul. One would check a certain node overall health and decide if we would need to spring a new instance at AWS or Digital Ocean.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    ScreenShots

    Consul Screenshots

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