Features by license level

When you use the Solo distribution of Istio to deploy ambient or sidecar service meshes, you can also provide your Solo Enterprise for Istio license.

The Solo distribution of Istio includes numerous features that you can unlock with three levels of Solo licenses. If you provide a -solo tagged image of Istio version 1.25 or later and your Solo license in your Istio installation values, your Istio installation is automatically enabled with the features provided by your license.

  • Basic features are unlocked with a Basic license. These standard features provide you with long-term and FIPS support for Istio on top of the open source offerings of Istio.
  • Premium features are unlocked with a Premium license (sometimes called a Solo Enterprise for Istio license). In addition to all Basic features, a Premium license unlocks better environment visibility and analysis with the Gloo management plane, and increased Solo support.
  • Enterprise features are unlocked with an Enterprise license (sometimes called a Solo Enterprise for Istio Enterprise license). In addition to all Basic and Premium features, a Premium license unlocks the most comprehensive enterprise-level features to help you build out your ideal, customized mesh setup.

If you do not already have a Basic, Premium, or Enterprise license, you can contact an account representative to obtain one. Note that if use a Premium or Enterprise license to install Istio, you can also use the same license to install the Gloo management plane for better visibility and insights into your environment.

To review the features that each license level supports, see the Istio support plans comparison on Solo.io. To learn more about select features that are enabled by an Enterprise license, see Enterprise features.

Get a license key

To get a Solo Enterprise for Istio license, contact an account representative.

Provide your license key during Solo Enterprise for Istio installation

When you install Solo Enterprise for Istio 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. Note that you must have either a Premium, Enterprise, or trial license to install the Gloo management plane, and cannot use a Basic license.

Trial license

  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 Solo Enterprise for Istio 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 Solo Enterprise for Istio.

    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 Solo Enterprise for Istio 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.

Solo Enterprise for Istio license

Provide your premium- or enterprise-level license for Solo Enterprise for Istio.

  1. Save your license key as an environment variables.
      export SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY=<license-key>
  2. Decide how you want to provide your license key during installation.

    When you install Solo Enterprise for Istio in your management cluster, you can provide your license key in either of the following ways:

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

    You can specify your license key by creating a secret before you install Solo Enterprise for Istio.

    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-mesh-license-key: "$SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY"
EOF
    3. When you install Solo Enterprise for Istio 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.

Provide your license key during Istio installation

When you install an ambient or sidecar service mesh in your workload clusters, you can provide your license by following one of the Istio installation guides in this documentation set. These guides include steps for how to provide your license in your service mesh installation values, depending on the method of installation.

Ambient mesh

Sidecar mesh

Monitor your license

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

CLI

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 Solo Enterprise for Istio license key, you can run the following command:
      meshctl license check --key $(echo ${SOLO_ISTIO_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 Solo Enterprise for Istio license is current and valid. The expiration date is listed so that you can update your license before it expires.

  INFO  License key gloo-mesh-license-key for product gloo-mesh is valid. Expires at 08 Oct 24 12:31 CEST
SUCCESS  Licenses are valid

In this example output, the Solo Enterprise for Istio 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 Solo Enterprise for Istio 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

To check your current license 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 left navigation bar, click the Support icon.
  3. Review the status of your license. In the following example, the Solo Enterprise for Istio license is expiring soon.

Product license statuses in the Gloo UI.
Figure: Product license statuses in the Gloo UI.
Product license statuses in the Gloo UI.
Figure: Product license statuses in the Gloo UI.

Metrics

Solo Enterprise for Istio 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 the solo_io_gloo_core_license metric.

  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 Solo Enterprise for Istio license expires in 247,649 minutes, which equals 171 days, 23 hours, and 29 minutes.

    MetricValue
    solo_io_gloo_core_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. For example, you might add the following alert to your values file to remind you to update your Solo Enterprise for Istio license 30 days before it expires. You can also add similar alerts for other Solo product licenses, or alerts for other timeframes (such as using expr: solo_io_gloo_core_license < 0 in the case that a license expires). You can review these alerts in the /alerts page of the Prometheus UI.

      ...
serverFiles:
  alerting_rules.yml:
    groups:
      - name: GlooCoreAlerts
        rules:
          ...
          - alert: GlooCoreLicenseExpiresSoon
            annotations:
              runbook: https://docs.solo.io/gloo-mesh/latest/setup/upgrade/#update-licenses
              summary: The Solo Enterprise for Istio license expires in 30 days.
            expr: solo_io_gloo_core_license < 1440 * 30
            labels:
              severity: warning

Update licenses

Before your Solo Enterprise for Istio license expires, you can update the license by performing a Helm upgrade.

For example, if you notice that your Gloo management plane deployments are in a crash loop, your 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 like the following:

  meshctl logs mgmt
  
  {"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.