Cluster Peering: Connecting Two Datacenters

Cluster peering is the modern way to connect two independent Consul datacenters so a service in one can securely reach a service in the other, without merging the clusters into a single failure domain.

In this lab you work with two complete datacenters (dc1 and dc2), each a two-server Consul cluster with its own mesh gateway (six VMs in total). You will:

• Confirm both datacenters are healthy and fully independent
• Peer them with the two-step `generate-token` / `establish` handshake
• Export a service from dc1 to dc2 with the `exported-services` config entry and

watch it appear as an imported service on the far side

• Authorize the connection with a peer-aware service intention and call the

exported service end to end through both mesh gateways

Everything runs on Consul Community Edition, so there is no shared Raft, no shared gossip pool, and no primary datacenter, exactly the loosely coupled model that makes cluster peering the recommended choice today.