Manage your InfluxDB Clustered license

Install and manage your InfluxDB Clustered license to authorize the use of the InfluxDB Clustered software.

• Install your InfluxDB license
• Recover from a license misconfiguration
• Renew your license
• License enforcement
  • A valid license is required
  • Periodic license checks
  • License grace periods
    • License expiry logs
    • Query brownout

Install your InfluxDB license

1. If you haven’t already, request an InfluxDB Clustered license.

2. InfluxData provides you with a license.yml file that encapsulates your license token as a custom Kubernetes resource.

3. Use kubectl to apply and create the License resource in your InfluxDB namespace:

   kubectl apply --filename license.yml --namespace influxdb
   

4. Update your AppInstance resource to include the useLicensedBinaries feature flag. Add the useLicensedBinaries entry to the .spec.package.spec.featureFlags property–for example:

   apiVersion: kubecfg.dev/v1alpha1
   kind: AppInstance
   # ...
   spec:
     package:
       spec:
         featureFlags:
           - useLicensedBinaries
   

InfluxDB Clustered detects the License resource and extracts the credentials into a secret required by InfluxDB Clustered Kubernetes pods. Pods validate the license secret both at startup and periodically (roughly once per hour) while running.

Recover from a license misconfiguration

If you deploy a licensed release of InfluxDB Clustered without an invalid or expired license, many of the pods in your cluster will crash on startup and will likely enter a CrashLoopBackoff state without ever running or becoming healthy. Because the license is stored in a volume-mounted Kubernetes secret, invalid licenses affect both old and new pods.

Once a valid License resource is applied, new pods will begin to start up normally. Licenses are validated when the License resource is applied. If the license is invalid when you attempt to apply it, the InfluxDB clustered license controller will not add or update the required secret.

Renew your license

In advance of your license expiration, your InfluxData sales representative will contact you regarding license renewal. You may also contact your sales representative at any time.

License enforcement

InfluxDB Clustered authorizes use of InfluxDB software through licenses issued by InfluxData. The following sections provide information about InfluxDB Clustered license enforcement.

A valid license is required

When you include the useLicensedBinaries feature flag, Kubernetes pods running in your InfluxDB cluster must have a valid License resource to run. Licenses are issued by InfluxData. If there is no License resource installed in your cluster, one of two things may happen:

• Pods may become stuck in a ContainerCreating state if the cluster has never had a valid License resource installed.
• If an expired or invalid license is installed in the cluster, pods will become stuck in a CrashLoopBackoff state. Pod containers will attempt to start, detect the invalid license condition, print an error message, and then exit with a non-zero exit code.

Periodic license checks

During normal operation, pods in your InfluxDB cluster check for a valid license once per hour. You may see messages in your pod logs related to this behavior.

License grace periods

When InfluxData issues a license, it is configured with two expiry dates. The first is the expiry date of the contractual license. The second is a hard expiry of the license credentials, after which pods in your cluster will begin crash-looping until a new, valid license is installed in the cluster.

The period of time between the contractual license expiry and the hard license expiry is considered the grace period. The standard grace period is 90 days, but this may be negotiated as needed with your InfluxData sales representative.

License expiry logs

The following table outlines license expiry logging behavior to show when the log messages begin, the level (Warn or Error), and the periodicity at which they repeat.

Query brownout

Starting one month after your contractual license expiry, the InfluxDB Querier begins “browning out” requests. Brownouts return FailedPrecondition response codes to queries for a portion of every hour.

Brownouts only occur after the license has contractually expired. Also, they only impact query operations–no other operations (writes, compaction, garbage collection, etc) are affected.