Licensing

Choose Gloo product licenses link

Before you install Gloo Mesh Gateway, decide which Gloo product and module licenses you need for your environment. Gloo offers separate licenses for each product, such as Gloo Mesh Gateway and Gloo Mesh Enterprise. Additionally, the GraphQL module is offered as an add-on to the Gloo Mesh Gateway license.

Licensed products link

Product licenses unlock certain capabilities in your Gloo environment. Gloo products are built on hardened Solo images of related open source projects.

Licensed modules link

You can extend the capabilities of Gloo products with modules. Modules are typically bundled together in the same license as the product license.

Get a license key link

To get Gloo product licenses, contact an account representative. Your account representative can help you get the right license keys for the Gloo capabilities that you want for your environment. For example, depending on your needs, you might get one of the following license key combinations:

• For a trial installation of all Gloo products, you get a Gloo trial license key.
• For a Gloo Mesh Gateway setup that supports GraphQL capabilities, you get a Gloo Mesh Gateway license key that includes the GraphQL module add-on.
• For a setup that supports both Gloo Mesh Gateway and Gloo Mesh Enterprise capabilities, such as ingress routing as well as east-west service mesh routing, you get a Gloo Mesh Gateway license key and a Gloo Mesh Enterprise license key.

Provide your license key during installation link

When you install Gloo products in your management cluster, you provide your license keys either directly in your meshctl install command or Helm values file, or in a secret that you pass into the command or values file.

Trial license link

A trial license provides access to all Gloo products.

1. Save your trial license key as an environment variable.

     export GLOO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY=<gloo-trial-license-key>
     

2. Decide how you want to provide your trial key during installation.

   When you install Gloo Mesh Gateway in your management cluster, you can provide your trial license key in either of the following ways:

   • In the --set licensing.glooTrialLicenseKey=$GLOO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY flag of your install command.
   • In the licensing.glooTrialLicenseKey: $GLOO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY setting of your Helm values file.

   You can specify your trial license key by creating a secret before you install Gloo Mesh Gateway.

   1. Create the gloo-mesh namespace.

        kubectl create ns gloo-mesh
        

   2. Create a secret with your trial key in the gloo-mesh namespace.

        cat << EOF | kubectl apply -f -
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: Secret
      type: Opaque
      metadata:
        name: license-secret
        namespace: gloo-mesh
      stringData:
        gloo-trial-license-key: "$GLOO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY"
      EOF
        

   3. When you install Gloo Mesh Gateway in your management cluster, provide your secret in either of the following ways:
      • In the --set licensing.licenseSecretName=license-secret flag of your install command.
      • In the licensing.licenseSecretName: license-secret setting of your Helm values file.

Standard license link

You must have one license for each Gloo product that you want to install, such as Gloo Mesh Enterprise and Gloo Mesh Gateway. If you also purchased a module add-on such as GraphQL, this module is included in the product license (you do not need a separate license).

1. Save your standard license key as an environment variables.

     export GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY=<gloo-mesh-gateway-license-key>
     

2. Decide how you want to provide your license key during installation.

   When you install Gloo Mesh Gateway in your management cluster, you can provide your license key in either of the following ways:

   • In the --set licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey=$GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY flag of your install command.
   • In the licensing.glooGatewayLicenseKey: $GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY setting of your Helm values file.

   You can specify your license key by creating a secret before you install Gloo Mesh Gateway.

   1. Create the gloo-mesh namespace.

        kubectl create ns gloo-mesh
        

   2. Create a secret with your license key in the gloo-mesh namespace.

        cat << EOF | kubectl apply -f -
      apiVersion: v1
      kind: Secret
      type: Opaque
      metadata:
        name: license-secret
        namespace: gloo-mesh
      stringData:
        gloo-gateway-license-key: "$GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY"
      EOF
        

   3. When you install Gloo Mesh Gateway in your management cluster, provide your secret in either of the following ways:
      • In the --set licensing.licenseSecretName=license-secret flag of your install command.
      • In the licensing.licenseSecretName: license-secret setting of your Helm values file.

Monitor licenses link

You can check your licenses, including your license expiration dates, in multiple ways.

CLI link

To check your current licenses with the meshctl CLI, you can use the meshctl license check command.

• To pass in a license key directly, encode the key to base64 and pass it in the --key flag. For example, to check your Gloo Mesh Gateway and Gloo Mesh Enterprise license keys, you can run the following command:

    meshctl license check --key $(echo ${GLOO_MESH_GATEWAY_LICENSE_KEY} | base64 -w0),$(echo ${GLOO_MESH_LICENSE_KEY} | base64 -w0) 
    

• If you store your license keys in a Kubernetes secret, you can pass the secret YAML file in the --secrets-file flag instead.

    meshctl license check --secrets-file license-keys.yaml
    

In this example output, the Gloo Mesh Gateway license is current and valid, and a GraphQL module is added to the license. The expiration date is listed so that you can update your license before it expires.

  INFO  License key gloo-gateway-license-key for product gloo-gateway is valid. Expires at 08 Oct 24 12:31 CEST
INFO  License key gloo-gateway-license-key for gloo-gateway/graphql add-on is valid. Expires at 08 Oct 24 12:31 CEST
SUCCESS  Licenses are valid
  

In this example output, the Gloo Mesh Enterprise license is invalid. Check your license to ensure you entered it correctly, and if you pass the license key in the --key flag, be sure to encode it in base64.

  WARNING  License key gloo-mesh-license-key is not valid. Make sure that the license is correct. For help or to request a new license, contact Solo Support. See https://docs.solo.io/gloo-mesh-enterprise/main/support/support-ticket/
ERROR  Invalid licenses found
  

In this example output, the Gloo Mesh Enterprise license is valid but is expired. You can update your license in your Gloo environment.

  WARNING  Your gloo-mesh license expired on 2024-01-24 19:30:53 +0100 CET. To get a new license, contact Support.
ERROR  License is expired. For more info, see https://docs.solo.io/gloo-mesh-enterprise/latest/setup/prepare/licensing/#update-licenses
  

UI link

To check your current licenses with the Gloo UI:

1. Open the Gloo UI. The Gloo UI is served from the gloo-mesh-ui service on port 8090. You can connect by using the meshctl or kubectl CLIs.

   • meshctl: For more information, see the CLI documentation.

       meshctl dashboard
       

   • kubectl:
     1. Port-forward the gloo-mesh-ui service on 8090.

          kubectl port-forward -n gloo-mesh svc/gloo-mesh-ui 8090:8090
          

     2. Open your browser and connect to http://localhost:8090.
2. In the header navigation bar, click the gear icon.
3. Review the status of your licenses. In the following example, the Gloo Mesh Gateway license is current and valid, and no GraphQL module is added to the license. You can also check the expiration date so that you can update your license before it expires.

Metrics link

Gloo includes license metrics that you can view by using the UI of the built-in Prometheus server. These metrics give you the number of minutes until the license expires, which you can optionally use to set up alerts in Prometheus.

1. Open the Prometheus UI.

2. Query one of the following metrics:

   • solo_io_gloo_gateway_license
   • solo_io_gloo_mesh_license
   • solo_io_gloo_core_license
   • solo_io_gloo_network_license

3. In the output, check the value of the metric, which is the number of minutes until the license expires. For example, in this output, the Gloo Mesh Gateway license expires in 247,649 minutes, which equals 171 days, 23 hours, and 29 minutes.

   Metric	Value
   solo_io_gloo_gateway_license{app=“gloo-mesh-mgmt-server”, instance=“10.xx.x.x:9091”, job=“gloo-mesh-mgmt-server”, namespace=“gloo-mesh”, pod=“gloo-mesh-mgmt-server-65bd557b95-v8qq6”, pod_template_hash=“65bd557b95”}	247649.2563652057

4. Optional: If you want to add alerts for these license metrics, such as to remind you to update your license before it expires, you can add alerts to your Helm values file and apply the file during a Gloo upgrade. To get your current Helm values and upgrade Gloo, see Upgrade Gloo Mesh Gateway.
   
   For example, if you installed Gloo Mesh Enterprise, you might add the following alert to your values file to remind you to update your Gloo Mesh Enterprise license 30 days before it expires. You can also add similar alerts for other Gloo product licenses, or alerts for other timeframes (such as using expr: solo_io_gloo_gateway_license < 0 in the case that a license expires). You can review these alerts in the operations dashboard or in the /alerts page of the Prometheus UI.

     ...
   serverFiles:
       alerting_rules.yml:
           groups:
               - name: GlooPlatformAlerts
                 rules:
                   ...
                   - alert: GlooMeshLicenseExpiresSoon
                     annotations:
                       runbook: https://docs.solo.io/gloo-mesh-enterprise/latest/setup/prepare/licensing/#update-licenses
                       summary: The Gloo Mesh Enterprise license expires in 30 days.
                     expr: solo_io_gloo_gateway_license < 1440 * 30
                     labels:
                       severity: warning
     

Update licenses link

Before your Gloo license expires, you can update the license by patching the license key secret. If you use Gloo Mesh Gateway along with other Gloo products such as Gloo Mesh Enterprise, you can also update those licenses.

For example, if you notice that your Gloo management plane deployments are in a crash loop, your Gloo license might be expired. You can check the logs for one of the deployments, such as the management server, to look for an error message similar to the following:

  meshctl logs mgmt --kubecontext ${MGMT_CONTEXT}
  

  {"level":"fatal","ts":1628879186.1552186,"logger":"gloo-mesh-mgmt-server","caller":"cmd/main.go:24","msg":"License is invalid or expired, crashing - license expired", ...
  

To update your license, see the upgrade guide.