---
layout: docs
page_title: Configure client agents on virtual machines
description: >-
    Learn how to enable and configure Consul client agents.
---

# Configure client agents on virtual machines

This page describes the process to configure a Consul client agent on virtual machines (VMs). An automated process for production environments is demonstrated in the [Consul getting started on Virtual Machines tutorials](/consul/tutorials/get-started-vms/virtual-machine-gs-service-discovery).

## Overview

The Consul client agent is a long-running process that you must deploy on the nodes as your application workloads run on. They use [encrypted gossip communication](/consul/docs/concept/gossip) to communicate with Consul server agents so that Consul DNS requests return healthy results when you query the Consul catalog.

The process to deploy the client agent consists of the following steps:

1. Verify that the correct version of the Consul binary is installed.
1. Update the client agent configuration.
1. Add the client agent configuration to the node.
1. Ensure the Consul data directory has the correct permissions.
1. Start the Consul server process.

You also have the option to configure the `retry_join` stanza so that when a Consul agent starts, it automatically joins a cluster. This ability is called _cloud auto-join_. Configuration requirements vary by cloud provider. For more information, refer to [automatically join clusters to a cloud provider](/deploy/server/cloud-auto-join).

## Client agent configuration

Update the configuration with the following information required to join the cluster:

- Datacenter Name
- Consul server address

Depending on the cluster's existing security, you may need to update the client configuration with these additional parameters:

- CA certificate
- TLS server name
- Valid ACL token