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In this lesson, you’ll learn how to register a service in Consul, watch it appear in the UI, test it without a health check, and finally deregister it. Our environment consists of two Consul servers and one web client node (web-server-01).

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Verify Cluster Membership

On one of the Consul servers (consul-node-a), confirm that all nodes have joined the cluster:
Switch to the web client node (web-server-01) to define and register your service. You can watch these changes propagate instantly in the Consul UI:
The image shows a terminal window and a web browser displaying a Consul interface with a list of nodes, including "consul-node-a," "consul-node-b," and "web-server-01."

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Service Definition File

On web-server-01, create a JSON file to describe your service:
Add the following content:
The service.json file follows Consul’s service definition schema. You can extend it later with health checks under the "Check" block.

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Service Definition Fields

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Register the Service

Register your service definition with Consul:
In the Consul UI, the new service appears under Services with a healthy status:
The image shows a web interface for managing services, specifically displaying details for a service named "front-end-eCommerce" with a healthy status for "web-server-01." It includes options for searching and filtering by health status.
Meanwhile, Apache is serving its default test page:
The image shows a default Apache HTTP server test page, indicating the server is installed but not yet configured with content.

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Testing Without a Health Check

Stop the Apache HTTP server:
Reloading the test page in your browser times out, but in Consul, the front-end-eCommerce service still shows as passing because no application-level health check is defined.
Without a defined health check, Consul cannot detect application failures. Always configure checks to get accurate health status!
Restore the default page by restarting Apache:

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Deregister the Service

To remove the service from Consul:
You can also deregister services via the Consul UI or the HTTP API by specifying the service ID.
The front-end-eCommerce entry disappears from the Consul UI.

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