HashiCorp Inc., a $5.1 billion startup that provides software for managing information technology infrastructure, today introduced new features designed to make operating multicloud environments easier.

HashiCorp received its current $5.1 billion valuation after a $175 million funding round last March. The startup has grown into a unicorn by providing open-source software tools that automate many of the manual tasks involved in operating enterprise IT infrastructure. HashiCorp’s open-source tools, of which there are more than a half dozen, have an extensive installed base of large organizations. 

Today’s updates focus on one tool in particular: Consul, HashiCorp’s networking platform. Consul orchestrates the flow of data between a company’s applications and, in multicloud environments, enables information to travel between public clouds, as well as across on-premises data centers. For administrators, the platform provides automation features to ease day-to-day maintenance work. 

Consul’s feature set is being expanded with a new tool called Consul API Gateway that promises to make managing network traffic easier. Specifically, it helps manage inbound traffic to enterprise applications that use service mesh technology. 

A service mesh is a piece of software that manages the logistics of exchanging data between an application’s components. In an e-commerce application, for example, the product catalog component may need to exchange data with the shopping cart module. Service mesh adoption is growing rapidly in the enterprise, a trend that HashiCorp and several other IT software makers have been working to address. 

Consul API Gateway helps workloads that use a service mesh process inbound network requests they receive from other applications. The first step involved in exchanging data between two applications is to set up a secure connection. According to HashiCorp., Consul API Gateway automatically sets up connections based on technical parameters defined in advance by a company’s engineers. 

Consul API Gateway provides configuration options that allow IT teams to extensively customize how inbound data traffic is processed. Administrators can control the networking protocol that should be used to establish a connection. They also have the ability to define what network traffic should be routed to which application and how.

In the background, Consul API Gateway collects metadata on the inbound requests it processes. The metadata, which contains details such as which server sent the requests, helps organizations track what external systems are connecting to their applications.

Consul API Gateway will roll out to Consul alongside two other feature additions. Both enhancements focus on improving the user experience for administrators.

One of Consul’s main target use cases is simplifying network management for software container applications. As a result, many companies deploy the platform together with Kubernetes, the most popular framework for managing software containers. Installing the platform on Kubernetes until now required administrators to manually configure over half a dozen settings by writing a YAML file. The workflow is now being simplified: HashiCorp is rolling out a new command line tool will make it possible to install Consul with a single command.

The second usability-focused update that debuted this morning focuses on large IT environments with upwards of dozens of Kubernetes clusters. 

Previously, administrators had to install a separate Consul deployment for each Kubernetes cluster, which was a time-consuming process. Maintaining the deployments after the initial installation required significant resources as well. To ease administrators’ work, HashiCorp is adding a feature that enables multiple Kubernetes clusters to share a single Consul deployment.

Image: HashiCorp