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website/source/intro/vs/index.html.markdown
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---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Serf vs. Other Software"
page_title: "Consul vs. Other Software"
sidebar_current: "vs-other"
---
# Serf vs. Other Software
# Consul vs. Other Software
The problems Serf solves are not new; they've existed for a long time.
It should come as no surprise then that there are other options available
to solve some of these problems. In this section, we compare Serf to some
other options. In most cases, Serf can be used alongside these other systems, strengthening
them in areas they are weak.
The problems Consul solves are varied, but each individual feature has been
solved by many different systems. Although there is no single system that provides
all the features of Consul, there are other options available to solve some of these problems.
In this section, we compare Consul to some other options. In most cases, Consul is not
mutually exclusive with any other system.
Use the navigation to the left to read the comparison of Serf to specific
Use the navigation to the left to read the comparison of Consul to specific
systems.

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website/source/intro/vs/zookeeper.html.markdown
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---
layout: "intro"
page_title: "Serf vs. ZooKeeper, doozerd, etcd"
page_title: "Consul vs. ZooKeeper, doozerd, etcd"
sidebar_current: "vs-other-zk"
---
# Serf vs. ZooKeeper, doozerd, etcd
# Consul vs. ZooKeeper, doozerd, etcd
ZooKeeper, doozerd and etcd are all similar in their client/server
architecture. All three have server nodes that require a quorum of
nodes to operate (usually a simple majority). They are strongly consistent,
and expose various primitives that can be used through client libraries within
applications to build complex distributed systems.
ZooKeeper, doozerd and etcd are all similar in their architecture.
All three have server nodes that require a quorum of nodes to operate (usually a simple majority).
They are strongly consistent, and expose various primitives that can be used
through client libraries within applications to build complex distributed systems.
Serf has a radically different architecture based on gossip and provides a
smaller feature set. Serf only provides membership, failure detection,
and user events. Serf is designed to operate under network partitions
and embraces eventual consistency. Designed as a tool, it is friendly
for both system administrators and application developers.
Consul works in a similar way within a single datacenter with only server nodes.
In each datacenter, Consul servers require a quorum to operate
and provide strong consistency. However, Consul has native support for multiple datacenters,
as well as a more complex gossip system that links server nodes and clients.
ZooKeeper et al. by contrast are much more complex, and cannot be used directly
as a tool. Application developers must use libraries to build the features
they need, although some libraries exist for common patterns. Most failure
detection schemes built on these systems also have intrinsic scalability issues.
Most naive failure detection schemes depend on heartbeating, which use
periodic updates and timeouts. These schemes require work linear to
the number of nodes and place the demand on a fixed number of servers.
Additionally, the failure detection window is at least as long as the timeout,
meaning that in many cases failures may not be detected for a long time.
Additionally, ZooKeeper ephemeral nodes require that many active connections
be maintained to a few nodes.
If any of these systems are used for pure key/value storage, then they all
roughly provide the same semantics. Reads are strongly consistent, and availability
is sacraficed for consistency in the face of a network partition. However, the differences
become more apparent when these systems are used for advanced cases.
The strong consistency provided by these systems is essential for building leader
election and other types of coordination for distributed systems, but it limits
their ability to operate under network partitions. At a minimum, if a majority of
nodes are not available, writes are disallowed. Since a failure is indistinguishable
from a slow response, the performance of these systems may rapidly degrade
under certain network conditions. All of these issues can be highly
problematic when partition tolerance is needed, for example in a service
discovery layer.
The semantics provided by these systems are attractive for building
service discovery systems. ZooKeeper et al. provide only a primitive K/V store,
and require that application developers build their own system to provide service
discovery. Consul provides an opinionated framework for service discovery, and
eliminates the guess work and development effort. Clients simply register services
and then perform discovery using a DNS or HTTP interface. Other systems
require a home-rolled solution.
A compelling service discovery framework must incorporate health checking and the
possibility of failures as well. It is not useful to know that Node A
provides the Foo service if that node has failed or the service crashed. Naive systems
make use of heartbeating, using periodic updates and TTLs. These schemes require work linear
to the number of nodes and place the demand on a fixed number of servers. Additionally, the
failure detection window is at least as long as the TTL. ZooKeeper provides ephemeral
nodes which are K/V entries that are removed when a client disconnects. These are more
sophisticated than a heartbeat system, but also have inherent scalability issues and add
client side complexity. All clients must maintain active connecitons to the ZooKeeper servers,
and perform keep-alives. Additionally, this requires "thick clients", which are difficult
to write and often result in difficult to debug issues.
Consul uses a very different architecture for health checking. Instead of only
having server nodes, Consul clients run on every node in the cluster.
These clients are part of a [gossip pool](/docs/internals/gossip.html), which
serves several functions including distributed health checking. The gossip protocol implements
an efficient failure detector that can scale to clusters of any size without concentrating
the work on any select group of servers. The clients also enable a much richer set of health checks to be run locally,
where ZooKeeper ephemeral nodes are a very primitve check of liveness. Clients can check that
a web server is return 200, that memory utilization is not critical, there is sufficient
disk space, etc. The Consul clients expose a simple HTTP interface and avoid exposing the complexity
of the system is to clients in the same way as ZooKeeper.
Consul provides first class support for service discovery, health checking,
K/V storage, and multiple datacenters. To support anything more that simple K/V storage,
all these other systems require additional tools and libraries to be built on
top. By using client nodes, Consul provides a simple API than only requires thin clients.
Additionally, the API can be avoided entirely by using configuration files and the
DNS interface to have a complete service discovery solution with no development at all.
Additionally, Serf is not mutually exclusive with any of these strongly
consistent systems. Instead, they can be used in combination to create systems
that are more scalable and fault tolerant, without sacrificing features.

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website/source/layouts/intro.erb
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<div class="docs-sidebar hidden-print affix-top" role="complementary">
<ul class="nav docs-sidenav">
<li<%= sidebar_current("what") %>>
<a href="/intro/index.html">What is Serf?</a>
<a href="/intro/index.html">What is Consul?</a>
</li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("use-cases") %>>
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</li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("vs-other") %>>
<a href="/intro/vs/index.html">Serf vs. Other Software</a>
<a href="/intro/vs/index.html">Consul vs. Other Software</a>
<ul class="nav">
<li<%= sidebar_current("vs-other-zk") %>>
<a href="/intro/vs/zookeeper.html">ZooKeeper, doozerd, etcd</a>
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<a href="/intro/getting-started/install.html">Getting Started</a>
<ul class="nav">
<li<%= sidebar_current("gettingstarted-install") %>>
<a href="/intro/getting-started/install.html">Install Serf</a>
<a href="/intro/getting-started/install.html">Install Consul</a>
</li>
<li<%= sidebar_current("gettingstarted-agent") %>>