Get a license key

To get Gloo Network for Cilium license, contact an account representative.

Provide your license key during installation

When you install Gloo Network for Cilium 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

  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 Network 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 Network.

    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 Network 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

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

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

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

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

    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-network-license-key: "$GLOO_NETWORK_LICENSE_KEY"
EOF
    3. When you install Gloo Network 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 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 Gloo Network license key, you can run the following command:
      meshctl license check --key $(echo ${GLOO_NETWORK_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 Network license is current and valid. The expiration date is listed so that you can update your license before it expires.

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

In this example output, the Gloo Network 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-network-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 Network license is valid but is expired. You can update your license in your Gloo environment.

  WARNING  Your gloo-network 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.

    For more information, see the CLI documentation.

      meshctl dashboard
    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 license. You can also check the expiration date so that you can update your license before it expires.

Metrics

Gloo Network for Cilium 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_network_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 Gloo Network license expires in 247,649 minutes, which equals 171 days, 23 hours, and 29 minutes.

    MetricValue
    solo_io_gloo_network_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 Gloo Network 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_network_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: GlooNetworkAlerts
        rules:
          ...
          - alert: GlooNetworkLicenseExpiresSoon
            annotations:
              runbook: https://docs.solo.io/gloo-network/main/setup/upgrade/#update-licenses
              summary: The Gloo Network for Cilium license expires in 30 days.
            expr: solo_io_gloo_network_license < 1440 * 30
            labels:
              severity: warning

Update licenses

Before your Gloo Network for Cilium 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.