Based on the file below, in what directory would you place the consul.hcl configuration file in order to start the Consul service?

A . /usr/local/bin
B. /opt/services/consul
C. /etc/consul.d/
D. /etc/systemd/system/

Answer: C

Explanation:

Based on the executable statement in the service file, all .hcl configuration files for Consul would be placed in /etc/consul.d/ . You can break up your desired Consul configurations across multiple .hcl files if you wish. It’s common to put the actual Consul configuration in a consul.hcl file while putting node_meta data into a node_meta.hcl file, therefore both will be read upon starting or refreshing the Consul service. This is because the executable statement in the service file is using -config-dir rather than pointing to a single file using -config-file.

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/consul agent -config-dir=/etc/consul.d/

For more information about the configuration file and the -config-file and -config-dir can be found here.