[[spring-cloud-consul-install]]
= Install Consul

// TODO: document using Testcontainers and SpringApplication.from()

Please see the https://www.consul.io/intro/getting-started/install.html[installation documentation] for instructions on how to install Consul.

[[spring-cloud-consul-agent]]
== Consul Agent

A Consul Agent client must be available to all Spring Cloud Consul applications.  By default, the Agent client is expected to be at `localhost:8500`.  See the https://consul.io/docs/agent/basics.html[Agent documentation] for specifics on how to start an Agent client and how to connect to a cluster of Consul Agent Servers.  Start a development agent according to the documentation above.

This will start an agent in server mode on port 8500, with the ui available at http://localhost:8500

