5.6 License time testing/running out

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hello,

I want to test what happens when my license runs out on 5.6.

We currently have a prospect whose license will run out soon so I thought a good way to simulate this was to locally set up an Elastic 5.6 environment in a VM and try to let the license run out there.

However I have not found a way to do this.

I have a few questions:

  • Any way I can test this myself?
  • Does anyone know what happens when the license runs out on an elastic 5.6 instance?
    • Would elastic still function as it should?
    • What would happen to paid features?
2

To test it you would need a license, but 5.6 is too old, I'm not sure a trial license exists for it.

When the license expires the features that requires a license will stop working, including in this case the security features.

If I'm not wrong you will need to stop the cluster, remove the x-pack plugin, and start it again, not sure if it continues to work with a license expired because things were different in 5.6.

But since you have a valid license, You may be able to reach support.

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3

Thanks for the response!

5.6 is indeed old.

In 5.6, the basic license does not include security features?

I see thanks.

4

I have not used it in a very long time, but if I remember correctly I believe some APIs, e.g. monitoring and stats, will become disabled and this will affect Kibana. Traffic will still be encrypted but it will be difficult to work with the cluster. Not sure about other commercial features.

The basic license was not introduced until Elasticsearch 6.8 so does not apply to your version. Security was a pure commercial feature in Elasticsearch 5.x.

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5

Will this still happen even if I apply a basic license? (granted the features of the gold license will be gone.)

I can request a license here though? Which is the page to request the basic license.

6

There is as far as I know no basic license available for that version. If you want to use a basic license you need to upgrade to Elasticsearch 6.8 or later.

I had not seen this before and have never used that page. In that case I would recommend setting up a test cluster and apply the received license there to see what happens as the docs seem to be light on details.

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7

I'm not sure this works anymore, both 5.X and 6.X are discontinued and not supported anymore.

You may try to request a license through this page, but I'm not sure you will receive an answer, only someone from Elastic can confirm.

Also, security was not free until 6.8 and only the native realm.

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8

From memory, the basic license for v5.6 supported monitoring only. Every other x-pack feature required a paid (or trial) license.

I believe this page is still accurate:

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9

Thank you all for the replies! I am not quite sure which response to pick for the solution :sweat_smile:

10

Security was definitely not available in the basic license in 5.6. It was only added to basic in 6.8 and 7.1

The basic license didn't include a lot until X-Pack was included by default in Elasticsearch 6.3

I don't think there's a definitive place that lists what was included in basic in 5.6, but it definitely wasn't a lot (and definitely wasn't security).

The license expiration page I linked to is the most authoritative statement of what will happen when the license expires. It may not be perfect, but it will be better than our rough recollections.

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11

Thanks for all the replies!
Could you also take a look at this post?

The question is basically the same one, however what would happen in the next major version, 6.x.