Losing authentication on license BASIC install

Hello there, Right now i have elastic running with an expired license. When i set up my elastic search for the first time i set up authentication along with SSL. My understanding is that when your license expires you lose security features, however I still have authentication and SSL in my elastic search. I wanted to install the BASIC license to get monitoring but when i used the license API it responded that I was going to lose authentication upon install. I don't want to lose authentication or SSL. Will installing the license make authentication and ssl not work anymore?

Glad to hear you're using X-Pack Security! Our licensing is a bit lenient when the license expires - we don't want to take down production services due to a missed license upgrade, or "fail open" and potentially expose sensitive data to the world, so we don't immediately disable security functionality when the license expires. With an expired license, you may not use this in production and to make sure this is clear, when the license expires, we disable all cluster health-related APIs. This way, the admin will quickly learn that the license has expired, without immediately disabling end-user access to the cluster.

When you apply a Basic license, the API shows you the exact features that will be disabled, and requires that you pass an acknowledgement flag. Once you do that, security features are indeed disabled.

If you'd like to learn more about what's included in a Gold or Platinum license, you can take a look at our subscriptions page. Feel free to reach out to our team at info @elastic.co or direct message me, and I can connect you with the right folks to discuss.

Thanks for the response Steve! Just to be sure. This means that even though i have SSL in a elastic search without any license, That I will eventually lose this feature?

Yes, the Subscriptions page (link above) tries to make the feature availability as clear as we can. SSL/TLS encryption is not available with a Basic license. Thanks, Steve

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