We're looking into how we could manage the configuration of several microservices (10 - 15 services) and fat client applications which are installed in equipment (several hundreds). The applications are being developed in Java (for what it's worth). The equipment doesn't always have a working connection to the network, so the configuration must also be cached locally.
We have been looking in to Spring Cloud Config and services such as Consul, Zookeeper and Etcd. We particularly like Consul as it comes with a lot of functionality out-of-the-box, not in the latest a user interface.
What we are still struggling with is how we should setup such a tool especially for the equipment configuration. We have four different types of equipment which can be running slightly different versions of their respective applications. These applications share some configuration settings, whereas other settings are specific to a version, an equipment type or even a single equipment.
It seems pretty easy to store the configuration for one version of a single type in a tool like Consul, but how could we structure the settings in Consul for the environment we have in such a way that it is still clear and understandable for service engineers who shouldn't be too familiar with all the intricacies of the application? Is Consul actually the right tool for this?
