In a typical setup, Vault coordinates with which shared backend to perform leader election?

Vault typically uses Consul as the shared backend for performing leader election. In a highly available setup with Vault, it is crucial to have a reliable mechanism to determine which instance of Vault is the leader responsible for processing requests and managing the state of the system. Consul, being a service networking solution, provides the necessary functionality by offering key-value storage and supporting leader election capabilities.

When Vault starts up, it registers itself with Consul, which then facilitates the leader election process among the various Vault instances. This helps to ensure that only one instance can act as the leader at any given time, maintaining the integrity and consistency of Vault's operations.

While other technologies like Cassandra, Etcd, and Redis also offer distributed coordination and data storage capabilities, they do not serve as the recommended backend for leader election in Vault's architecture. Consul's integration and support for service discovery and health checking make it a preferred choice for Vault deployments. This allows Vault to achieve high availability and seamless failover, enhancing its resilience and reliability in production environments.