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You are viewing the documentation for Solo Enterprise for Istio, formerly known as Gloo Mesh (OSS APIs).

Licensing

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Get a Solo Enterprise for Istio license and manage its lifecycle in your environment.
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. In addition to all Basic features, a Premium license unlocks increased Solo support.
  • Enterprise features are unlocked with an 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 you use a Premium or Enterprise license to install a Solo distribution of Istio, you can also use the same license to install the Solo UI for better visibility 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 UI installation

When you install the Solo UI in a cluster, you provide your license keys either as an environment variable in your Helm values file, or in a secret that you pass into the Helm command or values file. Note that you must have an Enterprise or trial license to install the Solo UI, and cannot use a Basic or Premium license.
Trial license

  1. Save your trial license key as an environment variable.
    export SOLO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY=<solo-trial-license-key>
  2. Decide how you want to provide your trial key during installation.
    When you install the Solo UI management Helm chart in a cluster, you can provide your trial license key in the licensing.licenseKey: $SOLO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY setting of your Helm values file.
    You can specify your trial license key by creating a secret before you install the Solo UI.
    1. Create the solo-enterprise namespace.
      kubectl create ns solo-enterprise --context ${context1}
    2. Create a secret with your trial key in the solo-enterprise namespace.
      cat << EOF | kubectl apply --context ${context1} -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
type: Opaque
metadata:
  name: license-secret
  namespace: solo-enterprise
stringData:
  gloo-trial-license-key: "${SOLO_TRIAL_LICENSE_KEY}"
EOF
    3. When you install the Solo UI management Helm chart in the cluster, provide your secret in the licensing.secretName: license-secret setting of your Helm values file.
Solo Enterprise for Istio license

Provide your 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 the Solo UI management Helm chart in a cluster, you can provide your license key in the licensing.licenseKey: $SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY setting of your Helm values file.
    You can specify your license key by creating a secret before you install the Solo UI.
    1. Create the solo-enterprise namespace.
      kubectl create ns solo-enterprise --context ${context1}
    2. Create a secret with your license key in the solo-enterprise namespace.
      cat << EOF | kubectl apply --context ${context1} -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
type: Opaque
metadata:
  name: license-secret
  namespace: solo-enterprise
stringData:
  solo-enterprise-license-key: "$SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY"
EOF
    3. When you install the Solo UI management Helm chart in the cluster, provide your secret in the licensing.secretName: 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

Update your license

Before your Solo Enterprise for Istio license expires, update it by upgrading the Helm release with a new license key.
  1. Get a new license key by contacting your account representative.
  2. Save the new license key as an environment variable.
    export SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY=<new-key-string>
  3. Upgrade the management Helm release with the new license key. Use --reuse-values to preserve your existing configuration.
    helm upgrade solo-management \
oci://us-docker.pkg.dev/solo-public/solo-enterprise-helm/charts/management \
-n solo-enterprise \
--reuse-values \
--set licensing.licenseKey=${SOLO_ISTIO_LICENSE_KEY}
Architecture