Licensing

The licensing system introduced with BeeGFS 8 is designed to be non-obtrusive with no remote verification or telemetry and exists mainly to promote awareness and encourage compliance with the BeeGFS License Agreement. Licensing behavior has evolved slightly over the course of the BeeGFS 8 release series, and this page describes what to expect after upgrading past a certain release.

BeeGFS 8.0

Key Change: Introduced enterprise and temporary licenses.

User Impact: Enterprise features are disabled unless the system has a valid enterprise or temporary license installed.

What else to know:

• When an enterprise license is installed a few things happen based on the installed license:

  • Additional enterprise functionality such as storage pools and quotas will be available.

  • A maximum number of machines that can participate in the file system will be enforced.

• When a temporary license is installed all features are unlocked with no machine limit enforced.

• When enterprise or temporary licenses expire, enterprise features will cease to work.

Note

For the purpose of license enforcement a “machine” is defined as a single physical or virtual server running BeeGFS metadata and/or storage services. Multiple services running on the same machine, for example a multi-mode or HA deployment, do not individually count against the machine limit. The number of clients is not taken into consideration when counting machines for license enforcement.

BeeGFS 8.3

Key Change: Introduces community licenses and defines a capacity limit on the community edition.

User Impact:

• A system must have an enterprise license, a temporary license, or a community license installed to comply with the BeeGFS License Agreement.

  • If the above conditions are not satisfied the BeeGFS tool will log a warning with every command. More strict enforcement may be introduced in a future release.

• When enterprise or community licenses are 90 days from expiration, or temporary licenses are 14 days from expiration, a warning will be logged with every command.

• If a community license is installed and the system is over the capacity limit, a warning will be logged with every command.

What else to know:

• Systems must be upgraded to BeeGFS 8.3 before obtaining/installing a community license using the system specific URL generated by the beegfs license command.

  • Community licenses cannot be used with BeeGFS versions older than 8.3, and it is not possible to obtain/install a community license prior to upgrading.

  • It is only possible to obtain a temporary license when navigating directly to the self-service license portal.

• Community licenses do not unlock or provide a trial of any enterprise features. To try BeeGFS enterprise features install a temporary license then switch to either a full enterprise or community license before it expires. Note that enterprise features enabled/configured by a temporary or enterprise license will cease to work if a community license is later installed.

• When an enterprise license expires the system will remain functional but enterprise features will cease to work. When a temporary or community license expires the system is considered unlicensed.

Obtaining Licenses

Before upgrading to BeeGFS 8, enterprise users should first obtain a license key by contacting licensing@thinkparq.com. If you want to try out BeeGFS 8 or accidentally upgraded before obtaining a license key, temporary licenses are available through the self-service portal.

To obtain a community license upgrade to BeeGFS 8.3+ and run beegfs license. This will generate a system specific URL that automatically provides limited information about the deployment including the storage capacity, number of metadata and storage services, and the network protocol.

Licenses can always be added/updated non-disruptively on existing systems, see below for details.

Configuring Licensing

These steps can be followed to enable licensing on a new or existing BeeGFS install:

1. Install the libbeegfs-license package on all machines that may run the BeeGFS management service. If the BeeGFS management service can run on multiple machines, this package should be installed everywhere the BeeGFS management service can run. Starting with BeeGFS 8.3 this package will automatically be installed on all machines where the management package is installed.

   1. Note without the management service running on the same machine, installing this package has no effect, so it is safe to install anywhere it might be needed.

2. On all machines where the BeeGFS management service can run, download your license file to /etc/beegfs/license.pem.

   1. Optionally use the management’s license-cert-file configuration option to specify an alternative path, for example in an HA environment if you use a shared disk/LUN for configuration and data, you could place the license in the same location to ensure it is always available on whichever machine is running the management service.

3. Perform one of the following options to reload the license:

   1. If this is a new install simply start the management service. The following will be logged if the license verification library and license are installed correctly:

      [2024-12-05T14:49:31Z INFO ] Successfully initialized certificate verification library.
      [2024-12-05T14:49:31Z INFO ] Successfully loaded license certificate: TMP-513679565
      

   2. If this is an existing deployment, from a machine with the beegfs-tools package installed run beegfs license --reload to install a new license without requiring any downtime. The license details will be returned on success.

4. Optionally verify the details of the installed license with beegfs license.

Renewing or updating a license

If the license ever needs to be updated, for example when extending support contract duration or adding additional servers, simply place the new license file at the path configured in the management service and run the beegfs license --reload command. The new license will be applied immediately and without the need for a restart of the management service.