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
License enforcement is currently an opt-in feature
In currently available versions of InfluxDB Clustered, license enforcement is an opt-in feature that allows InfluxData to introduce license enforcement to customers, and allows customers to deactivate the feature if issues arise. In the future, all releases of InfluxDB Clustered will require customers to configure an active license before they can use the product.
To opt into license enforcement, include the useLicensedBinaries
feature flag
in your AppInstance
resource (See the example below).
To deactivate license enforcement, remove the useLicensedBinaries
feature flag.
Install your InfluxDB license
If setting up an InfluxDB Clustered deployment for the first time, first set up the prerequisites and configure your cluster. After your InfluxDB namespace is created and prepared, you will be able to install your license.
-
If you haven’t already, request an InfluxDB Clustered license.
-
InfluxData provides you with a
license.yml
file that encapsulates your license token as a custom Kubernetes resource. -
Use
kubectl
to apply and create theLicense
resource in your InfluxDB namespace:kubectl apply --filename license.yml --namespace influxdb
-
Update your
AppInstance
resource to include theuseLicensedBinaries
feature flag. Add theuseLicensedBinaries
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 validLicense
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.
Starts at | Log level | Log periodicity |
---|---|---|
1 month before expiry | Warn | 1 msg per hour |
1 week before expiry | Warn | 1 msg per 5 min |
At expiry | Error | 1 msg per 5 min |
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.
Starts at | Brownout coverage |
---|---|
7 days after expiry | 5 minutes per hour |
1 month after expiry | 100% of queries |
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.
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Support and feedback
Thank you for being part of our community! We welcome and encourage your feedback and bug reports for InfluxDB and this documentation. To find support, use the following resources:
Customers with an annual or support contract can contact InfluxData Support.