# Downgrading from Gold licence to basic license

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-security, license\
**Created:** [August 17, 2020, 9:01am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202 "2020-08-17T09:01:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![baidwan007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/34f0e0/32.png) [@baidwan007](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/baidwan007)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 9:01am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202/1 "2020-08-17T09:01:32Z")

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We have a cluster with ES 7.1 where we use gold licence. We have

1. native authentication realm (order 0) and pki realm (order 1) as auth mechanisms.
2. xpack.security.enabled: true in elasticsearch.yaml  
Now we have decided to downgrade our cluster to basic licence. I read here [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/update-license.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/update-license.html) that all we need to do is fire an update licence command on kibana to do this with 0 downtime.

In this downgrade process my doubt is that

1. By default xpack is disable in basic licence. So after firing update licence command would i need to restart the elastic search service in order for ES to read the property again as set in elastic search yaml ?
2. I understand that pki is not available in basic but do i need to remove pki related properties from my elasticsearch.yaml? Or can they stay and basic licence would just make them useless rather than throwing errors around how it does not understand what pki means in elastic search. yaml

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 9:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202/2 "2020-08-17T09:14:01Z")

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1. No, that is not correct
2. They should be ignored, but it'd make sense to remove them if you can

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**Author:** ![baidwan007](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/34f0e0/32.png) [@baidwan007](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/baidwan007)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 9:30am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202/3 "2020-08-17T09:30:57Z")

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Thanks for the quick response Mark!

So if we are not using any other gold feature then downgrading from gold to basic is as simple as running one Kibana update license command. And with zero downtime. Nothing else need to be done. Right?

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**Author:** ![warkolm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/warkolm/32/39224_2.png) [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)\
**Post date:** [August 17, 2020, 9:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202/4 "2020-08-17T21:58:39Z")

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Yes, that should be all you need to do.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2020, 9:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/downgrading-from-gold-licence-to-basic-license/245202/5 "2020-09-14T21:58:41Z")

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