Quick Installation of Vault and Consul

I would like to cover a quick and simple setup of Consul and Vault for learning purpose. These steps short circuit a real world advanced setup options.

Download the proper package for OS and architecture from

Download Consul https://www.consul.io/downloads.html
Download Vault https://www.vaultproject.io/downloads.html

Consul Setup -
write a shell or batch file with following command
E.g. consul_start.bat with following content

consul agent -ui -server -data-dir mydata -advertise 127.0.0.1 -bootstrap-expect 1

Vault Setup -
write a shell or batch file with following command
E.g. consul_start.bat with following content

vault server -config=vault-example.hcl

vault-example.hcl content

backend "consul" {

 address="127.0.0.1:8500"

 path="vault"

}



listener "tcp" {

  address = "127.0.0.1:8200"

  tls_disable = 1

}



disable_mlock = true

C:\_workarea_\tools\vault_0.9.5_windows_amd64>vault operator init

[0;31mError initializing: Put https://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/sys/init: http: server gave HTTP response to HTTPS client [0m

The default address of the client uses https. Just set the -address parameter or set the VAULT_ADDRESS env var and you'll be good to go.

set VAULT_ADDR=http://127.0.0.1:8200

vault operator init -key-shares=5 -key-threshold=2

-key-threshold - This defines the number of keys required to unseal vault
-key-shares - This defines number of keys that should be generated during initialization

[0;0mUnseal Key 1: 45MbjNghzYmFjaagC5Fcx4qj5E2jOl5ZWYByFctXV+T3 [0m
[0;0mUnseal Key 2: Z/TffCSL0mUw4NbMbHpf0dEjGge5iSZja6C7dEoY1AP1 [0m
[0;0mUnseal Key 3: C5YvqiPS20VgtiPPDuqgEwsAt6+qPE0+qO7P8zyqCEJf [0m
[0;0mUnseal Key 4: WLazf5dhHIQUSnOLLi5z29WFaLwD9ap9XASKbgHXXuc0 [0m
[0;0mUnseal Key 5: O1fgO9aT38klIVemz6q5WCXlpQaFS4jjxByaACco9Ga4 [0m
[0;0m [0m
[0;0mInitial Root Token: 4360d91f-cf9d-a33f-45ca-2bdc699caef1 [0m

Make a note of at least two Unseal keys and your root keys

unseal is a one time process as long as your backend does not change.

Now, let us unseal by running this command twice, provide atleast two unique unseal key from the init operation

vault operator unseal

Unseal Key (will be hidden):

Login, by making use of Root token that was generated during init process

vault login <Root Key>

Now , let us run commands to store and retrieve key/value sercrets

vault.exe write secret/my-app/s3password value=s3qwqwq

vault.exe read secret/my-app/s3password

You may also login from the UI and navigate to view the stored key/values

http://localhost:8500/ui/

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