---
layout: "docs"
page_title: "Consul Enterprise"
sidebar_current: "docs-enterprise"
description: |-
  Consul Enterprise features a number of capabilities beyond the open source offering that may be beneficial in certain workflows.
---

# Consul Enterprise

Consul Enterprise simplifies operations by automating workflows. It adds support
for microservices deployments across complex network topologies. It also
increases both scalability and resilience. Features include:

- [Automated Backups](/docs/enterprise/backups/index.html)
- [Automated Upgrades](/docs/enterprise/upgrades/index.html)
- [Enhanced Read Scalability](/docs/enterprise/read-scale/index.html)
- [Redundancy Zones](/docs/enterprise/redundancy/index.html)
- [Advanced Federation for Complex Network
  Topologies](/docs/enterprise/federation/index.html)
- [Network Segments](/docs/enterprise/network-segments/index.html)
- [Sentinel](/docs/enterprise/sentinel/index.html)

These features are part of [Consul
Enterprise](https://www.hashicorp.com/consul.html).

## Licensing

Licensing capabilities were added to Consul Enterprise v1.1.0. The license is set
once for a datacenter and will automatically propagate to all nodes within the
datacenter over a period of time scaled between 1 and 20 minutes depending on the
number of nodes in the datacenter. The license can be set via the 
[API](/api/operator/license.html) or the [CLI](/docs/commands/license.html).