Persist Sentinel Rules to Nacos: Step-by-Step Configuration Guide

Persist Sentinel Rules to Nacos

Sentinel rule configurations disappear after a service restart. By storing these rules in a configuration center such as Zookeeper, Apollo, or Nacos, the rules can be shared across restarts and multiple nodes.

Add Nacos Storage Dependency

Include the following Maven dependency to declare that Sentinel will use Nacos as the rule data store:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.alibaba.csp</groupId>
  <artifactId>sentinel-datasource-nacos</artifactId>
</dependency>

Add YML Configuration

If you use Sentinel's standalone datasource feature, declare the datasource information in application.yml:

spring:
  application:
    name: stock-service
  profiles:
    active: dev
  cloud:
    sentinel:
      transport:
        port: 8719
        dashboard: localhost:8080
      enabled: true
      datasource:
        ds:
          nacos:
            dataId: ${spring.application.name}-flow-rules
            groupId: DEFAULT_GROUP
            data-type: json
            rule-type: flow

Configure Rules in Nacos

In the Nacos console, add a new configuration with the correct dataId and groupId . The data should follow the JSON format, for example:

[
  {
    "resource": "abc",
    "controlBehavior": 0,
    "count": 20.0,
    "grade": 1,
    "limitApp": "default",
    "strategy": 0
  }
]

View Configuration in Sentinel

Start the service and open the Sentinel dashboard. Under the "Flow Control" menu you can see the rules defined in the configuration center.

Summary

The above steps complete the persistence of Sentinel rules to Nacos. Note that after modifying rules in the Sentinel console, the changes are not automatically synchronized back to Nacos; manual source code changes or a push‑mode synchronization are required.

For more details, refer to the official Sentinel documentation: Sentinel Wiki .