2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
---
2020-04-07 18:55:19 +00:00
layout: docs
2022-09-09 18:46:33 +00:00
page_title: Advanced Federation (Enterprise)
2020-04-07 18:55:19 +00:00
description: >-
2022-09-09 18:46:33 +00:00
Advanced federation connects partial network areas through paired servers. Learn how to support hub-and-spoke and tree network topologies in your Consul deployment.
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
---
# Consul Enterprise Advanced Federation
2020-04-23 22:13:18 +00:00
<EnterpriseAlert>
2021-12-10 22:42:33 +00:00
This feature requires
self-managed Consul Enterprise.
Refer to the{' '}
2022-04-27 16:25:16 +00:00
<a href="/docs/enterprise#consul-enterprise-feature-availability">enterprise feature matrix</a>
2022-04-27 16:45:30 +00:00
{' '}for additional information.
2020-04-23 22:13:18 +00:00
</EnterpriseAlert>
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
Consul's core federation capability uses the same gossip mechanism that is used
for a single datacenter. This requires that every server from every datacenter
be in a fully connected mesh with an open gossip port (8302/tcp and 8302/udp)
and an open server RPC port (8300/tcp). For organizations with large numbers of
datacenters, it becomes difficult to support a fully connected mesh. It is often
desirable to have topologies like hub-and-spoke with central management
datacenters and "spoke" datacenters that can't interact with each other.
2020-04-09 23:46:54 +00:00
[Consul Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/consul) offers a [network
2022-09-06 15:35:01 +00:00
area mechanism](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/federation-network-areas) that allows operators to
2017-05-05 05:24:04 +00:00
federate Consul datacenters together on a pairwise basis, enabling
partially-connected network topologies. Once a link is created, Consul agents
can make queries to the remote datacenter in service of both API and DNS
requests for remote resources (in spite of the partially-connected nature of the
topology as a whole). Consul datacenters can simultaneously participate in both
network areas and the existing WAN pool, which eases migration.
