Portworx Licensing

Introduction

Starting with the v1.2.8 release, the Portworx products support the following license types:

License type	Description
Portworx Developer	Embedded into px-developer, free license that supports select functionality.
Trial	Automatically installed with px-enterprise, enables functionality for 30 days.
Portworx Enterprise VM	Enterprise license, suitable for Virtual Machine (VM) installs on-prem and in cloud
Portworx Enterprise Metal	Enterprise license, suitable for installs on any bare metal hardware

Depending on the type of the container you are installing, a different license will be automatically activated:

px-developer container activates free “PX-Developer” license, and
px-enterprise automatically activates the “Trial” license (limited to 30 days), which can be upgraded to a “PX-Enterprise” license at any time.

Checking your License

A brief license summary is provided with the pxctl status command:

pxctl status

Status: PX is operational
License: Trial license (expires in 30 days)
 [...]

More details about each individual licensed feature is displayed via pxctl license list command, ie.:

pxctl license list

DESCRIPTION                  ENABLEMENT  ADDITIONAL INFO
Number of nodes maximum         1000
Number of volumes maximum       1024 [...]
Virtual machine hosts            yes
Product SKU                     Trial    expires in 30 days

7 days before your PX license is set to expire, an alert will trigger saying that your license is getting ready to expire. The alert will tell you how long you have to renew your license. Note that the alert will also keep triggering after the license has expired. For more details, see this page.

Licensed features

In the table below, we can see the overview of features that are controlled via licensing as of PX v1.2.8.

Description	Type	Details
Number of nodes maximum	number	Defines the maximum number of nodes in a cluster
Number of volumes maximum	number	Defines max number of volues on a single node
Volume capacity [TB] maximum	number	Defines max size of a single volume
Storage aggregation	yes/no	Defines if volumes may be aggregated across multiple nodes
Shared volumes	yes/no	Defines if volumes may be shared w/ other nodes
Volume sets	yes/no	Defines if volumes may be scaled
BYOK data encryption	yes/no	Defines if volumes may be encrypted
Resize volumes on demand	yes/no	Defines if volumes can be resized
Snapshot to object store	yes/no	Defines if volumes may be snapshotted to Amazon S3, MS Azure and Google storage
Cluster level migration	yes/no	Defines if applications and data (using K8s namespace) can be migrated between paired clusters
Disaster Recovery (PX-DR)[Add-on]	yes/no	Enables synchronous and asynchronous DR features (requires 2.1 or later, needs additional license)
Virtual machine hosts	yes/no	Software may be deployed on VMs (including Amazon EC2, OpenStack Nova, etc…)
Bare-metal hosts	yes/no	Software may be deployed on commodity hardware

Type of Licenses

PX-Developer License

The “PX-Developer” license is a default license for px-developer containers. The “PX-Developer” license is permanent and free, and provides a select set of functionality. It supports the following features:

pxctl license list

DESCRIPTION                  ENABLEMENT    ADDITIONAL INFO
Number of nodes maximum             3
Number of volumes maximum         256
Volume capacity [TB] maximum        1
Storage aggregation                no      feature upgrade needed
Shared volumes                    yes
Volume sets                       yes
BYOK data encryption               no      feature upgrade needed
Resize volumes on demand           no      feature upgrade needed
Snapshot to object store           no      feature upgrade needed
Bare-metal hosts                  yes
Virtual machine hosts             yes
Product SKU                  PX-Developer  permanent

Trial License

The “Trial” license activates automatically when the px-enterprise is installed. The trial license provides the full product functionality (except PX-DR) for 30 days.

DESCRIPTION                  ENABLEMENT  ADDITIONAL INFO
Number of nodes maximum         1000
Number of volumes maximum       1024
Volume capacity [TB] maximum      40
Storage aggregation              yes
Shared volumes                   yes
Volume sets                      yes
BYOK data encryption             yes
Resize volumes on demand         yes
Snapshot to object store         yes
Bare-metal hosts                 yes
Virtual machine hosts            yes
Product SKU                     Trial    expires in 6 days, 20:40

EXPIRATION

When the trial period expires, one will no longer be able to create new volumes or volume snapshots. The normal functionality may be restored at any time, by purchasing and installing the “PX-Enterprise” license.

UPGRADE NOTES

The “Trial” license can be upgraded into a “PX-Enterprise” license by contacting support@portworx.com, and activating via the “activation code” or via the license file (see PX-Enterprise below for details)
The “Trial” license itself cannot be upgraded or extended with another “Trial”, or downgraded into “PX-Developer” license.

PX-Enterprise License

The “PX-Enterprise” license is our most flexible license, which comes with a number of options. Please reach out to support@portworx.com to determine which type of “PX-Enterprise” license will work best for your needs.

Once installed, the PX-Enterprise license is “locked” to a single PX-Cluster via the unique UUID identifier of the cluster. Such license (or, license-file) will not work on other clusters.

Installation

The easiest way to install the “PX-Enterprise” license, is via the “Activation ID” (reach out to us at support@portworx.com for purchasing licenses), ie:

pxctl license activate c0ffe-fefe-activation-123

Note that the “license activation” process will require active Internet connection from the PX-nodes to the license-server, as the activation process automatically registers the cluster UUID, generates and installs the license on the cluster. Upon activating the license on one PX-node, all remaining PX-nodes will automatically update to the new license.

Install on air-gapped environments

Customers that do not have an active Internet connection on their PX-cloud, will need to be guided by the Portworx support (can be reached at support@portworx.com) , and will follow a slightly different process.

Customers will be asked to provide the Cluster UUID information (available via pxctl cluster list command):

pxctl cluster list

Cluster ID: MY_FAVORITE_PX_CLUSTER
Cluster UUID: f987ad4b-987c-4e7e-a8bd-788c89cc40f1
Status: OK [...]

Upon supplying the “Cluster UUID”, the customers will get their “license file”. The “license file” will need to be uploaded to one of the PX-nodes, and activated via the following command:

pxctl license add license_file.bin

Finally, please note that the license installation is a non-obtrusive process, which will not interfere with the data stored on the PX volumes, nor will it interrupt the active IO operations.

License transfer

From PX Enterprise 1.4.0 onwards, a valid enterprise license can be transferred between two Portworx clusters. Both Portworx clusters need to be operational at the time of license transer. The source cluster must have a valid PX-Enterprise license, while the destination cluster can have either a valid or expired Trial license, PX-Developer, or expired PX-Enterprise license.

License transfer command requires ‘clusterUUID’ from the source cluster, (available via pxctl cluster list command) and remote PX cluster node IP.

pxctl license transfer -h

NAME:
   pxctl license transfer - Transfer license to remote PX cluster

USAGE:
   pxctl license transfer <clusterUUID> <remoteIP>

DESCRIPTION:
   Command swaps licenses between the two Portworx clusters.

   Note that both Portworx clusters need to be operational at the time this
   command is ran.
   The source cluster must have a valid PX-Enterprise license, while the
   destination cluster can have either a valid or expired Trial license,
   PX-Developer, or expired PX-Enterprise license.

EXAMPLE:
   pxctl license transfer f91531d9-bf65-46f5-9619-eb99128e3270 10.0.15.201

The license transfer happens directly between the Portworx clusters, so at least one node from source cluster must have a network connectivity to a node in the target Portworx cluster.
After the successful license transfer, the two Portworx clusters will have swapped identities, and licenses (for example, Portworx cluster A will have Trial license originally from Portworx cluster B, while the cluster B will have the PX Enterprise license originally from cluster A)

For information on purchase, upgrades and support, please reach out to us at support@portworx.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Network requirements for Portworx on Kubernetes