In this chapter, I have guided you through the main features of two Spring Cloud projects—Consul and Zookeeper. I haven't focused only on Spring Cloud functionalities, but have also given you the instructions on how to start, configure, and maintain instances of its tools. We have discussed even more advanced scenarios, such as setting up a cluster consisting of numerous members using Docker. There, you had a chance to see the true power of Docker as a development tool. It allowed us to initialize a cluster that consists of three members just by using three simple commands, without any additional configuration.
Consul seems to be an important alternative to Eureka as a discovery server when using Spring Cloud. I cannot say the same about Zookeeper. As you have probably noticed, I have written much more about Consul than Zookeeper. Also, Spring Cloud treats Zookeeper as a second choice. It still does not have a zoning mechanism or watching capability for configuration changes that...
