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Consul’s Snapshot Agent is an enterprise-only, long-running daemon that automates cluster backups. While open-source users must script snapshots via cron or CI/CD, the Snapshot Agent provides built-in scheduling, retention, and storage management.
The Snapshot Agent requires Consul Enterprise. If you’re on OSS Consul, implement external scripting for snapshots.

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Key Features

The image is a slide about the Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise), describing its features such as customizable intervals, retention configuration, and multiple storage options including local filesystem, S3-compatible storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage.
  • Custom intervals: e.g., hourly, six-hourly, daily
  • Retention policies: automatically purge old snapshots
  • Storage backends: local filesystem, S3-compatible (AWS S3, MinIO), Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage
Configure snapshot.interval (e.g., 24h) and snapshot.retain (e.g., 48) to control scheduling and purge behavior.

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Supported Storage Backends

By default, manual snapshots are written locally. The Snapshot Agent lets you offload backups to resilient, off-node stores:
BackendUse CaseExample Setting
S3-CompatibleAWS S3, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spacesaws_storage.s3_bucket = "consul-snapshots"
Azure Blob StorageEnterprise-grade Blob managementazure_storage.account = "myaccount"
Google Cloud StorageGCS buckets for global redundancygcs_storage.bucket = "consul-gcs-snapshots"
Local FilesystemOn-node backups (default for CLI/API)filesystem.path = "/var/consul/snapshots"

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Benefits

The image is an informational slide about the Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise), highlighting its benefits such as automated snapshots, high availability, failover, consistent snapshots, and health checks.
  • Automated snapshots on a defined schedule
  • High availability via agent-level leader election
  • Automatic failover: a new leader takes over if the current one fails
  • Consistent backups: only one snapshot per interval cluster-wide
  • Service registration & health checks for monitoring leader status
When the agent starts, it registers a Consul service with health checks. You can alert on missing leaders or failed snapshot jobs using your monitoring tools.

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Configuration

Setup involves two files: a JSON config for the agent and a systemd unit to manage the service.

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1. Snapshot Agent JSON

Save as /etc/snapshot.d/snapshot.json: 
{
  "snapshot_agent": {
    "http_addr": "127.0.0.1:8500",
    "token": "your-acl-token",
    "datacenter": "dc1",
    "snapshot": {
      "interval": "30m",
      "retain": 336,
      "deregister_after": "8h"
    },
    "aws_storage": {
      "s3_region": "us-east-1",
      "s3_bucket": "consul-snapshots"
    }
  }
}
Fields:
  • http_addr: Consul HTTP API address
  • token: ACL token with snapshot scope
  • datacenter: Optional target datacenter
  • snapshot.interval: Interval between snapshots
  • snapshot.retain: Number of snapshots to keep
  • snapshot.deregister_after: Deregister unhealthy agent after this duration
  • Storage blocks: one of aws_storage, azure_storage, gcs_storage, or filesystem
Refer to the Consul Snapshot Agent docs for full details.

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2. systemd Unit

Create /etc/systemd/system/consul-snapshot.service: 
[Unit]
Description=Consul Snapshot Agent
Documentation=https://www.consul.io/
Requires=network-online.target
After=consul.service
ConditionFileNotEmpty=/etc/snapshot.d/snapshot.json

[Service]
User=consul
Group=consul
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/consul snapshot agent -config-dir=/etc/snapshot.d/
KillMode=process
Restart=on-failure
LimitNOFILE=65536

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Then reload and enable: 
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start consul-snapshot
sudo systemctl enable consul-snapshot

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Process Overview

The image illustrates the Consul Snapshot Agent (Enterprise) process, showing how snapshots are created by a leader node and stored in an Amazon S3 bucket, with old snapshots being deleted for retention.
  1. All nodes run the Snapshot Agent.
  2. Agents hold a leader election each interval.
  3. The leader captures the snapshot and uploads it to storage (e.g., S3).
  4. The retention policy deletes older snapshots beyond the configured limit.

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Summary

The Consul Snapshot Agent simplifies enterprise-grade backup automation with scheduled snapshots, multi-backend support, and built-in high availability. It ensures consistent, recoverable cluster state without external scripting. This functionality will be demonstrated in the accompanying lab.

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