To prove your network automation skills, you can become a HashiCorp Consultant Associate Certification. The HashiCorp Certified Consul Associate Examination is one of four HashiCorp Cloud Engineer Certifications. It allows cloud engineers to prove their service networking expertise with HashiCorp Consul.
This article will provide detailed instructions on how to prepare for and pass the hashicorp consul exam. We will discuss the types of training materials, exam practice problems or dumps, practical experience, and other tips to help you prepare for the consul exam.
What is Consul?
Consul is one of four HashiCorp multicloud tools, which also includes Terraform, Vault and Nomad. HashiCorp Consul is a fully-featured service mesh that enables encrypted networking within service-oriented architectures. This is typically microservices. Microservices can be used to speed up development and deployment, but they can also increase network latency or compromise application traffic. Consul addresses network latency issues and traffic encryption problems by introducing:
Service discovery is made easier by the central service registry
Application configuration can be saved to the central key-value store
Service segmentation encrypted using service graph and TLS certificate authorities
Consul automates many critical networking tasks to ease the burden on both developers and operators. Developers can integrate with Kubernetes and Nomad to increase their speed and agility, while operators can leverage mutual TLS encryptions for better application layer security. This allows for greater consistency and security.
Let’s go over all components of Hashicorp Consul certification.
HashiCorp Networking Automation Certification Examination
You must pass the HashiCorp Networking Automation certification test to become a Hashicorp Certified Associate. This HashiCorp Consul associate certification exam focuses primarily on cloud engineers, such as solution architects, DevOps professionals and site reliability engineers.
Prerequisites for Certification Exam by HashiCorp Consul
Candidates must not only have a basic understanding about the open-source HashiCorp Consul but also:
Basic terminal skills
Sound containerization knowledge (such as Docker or Kubernetes).
Basic networking skills with load balancing, distributed systems and networking
Learn how to use ACL network filters
Learn about the lifecycle of TLS certificates
HashiCorp Consul Certification Exam Details
Candidates can only take the Consul Associate exam once per year. There is a seven-day waiting period before they can attempt another exam. Successful candidates receive a digital badge that can easily be shared and verified online after passing the certification exam. Below are more details about the exam:

Steps to prepare for the HashiCorp Consul Certification Examination
We recommend these preparation steps to become a Hashicorp Certified Consul Associates:
1. Learn the Objectives of the Consul Associate Exam
Candidates should have experience in implementing the Consul Associate exam objectives using HashiCorp Consul to be able to prepare for it. Candidates can prepare for the exam by using a personal demo environment. Each exam objective includes several sub-sections that cover all components. Below are the primary exam objects.
Explain Consul architecture
Deploy a single datacenter
Register services and use service discovery
Access the Consul key/value(KV)
Backup and restore
Use Consul service mesh
Secure agent communication
Secure services with basic access control list (ACL).
Use gossip encryption
2. Master HashiCorp Consul and the Official Consul Associate Study guide
The Consul Associate study guide is part of the HashiCorp Learn platform. It provides detailed information about all exam objectives. The study guide includes links to Consul documentation as well as learning tutorials that cover each section in detail. The Consul documentation provides candidates with the necessary theoretical knowledge regarding networking automation, while learning tutorials allow for hands-on training.
The study guide also contains “Study Tips” for every exam objective. These highlight major learning takeaways and allow candidates to focus on the specific Consul knowledge they need to pass the exam.
3. Consul Associate Review Guide for Select Learning
Consul Associate review guides are a simplified version of the more detailed study guide. They are intended for candidates who have more experience with Consul. It gives a quick overview and tutorials of Consul documentation, which allows candidates to focus on the topics they wish to review before taking the exam. It can be thought of as a table of contents for the Consul Associate study book. You can also use it to check off the objectives you have already covered.
4. Video Course
After you’ve read through the official documents from Hashicorp, it is time to spend a few dollars to purchase a product.