Platinum license expired

[pantomin (Lazar Mohacsi)]

Hi everyone,
I am quite new in ElasticSearch so any help would be highly appreciated. It happened that our ES platinum license expired, and now we can not run queries, which is understandable. My question: is there any solution for this problem?

The stack: ES 6.5

The error message what I got:

                curl -uelastic -XGET <ip>:9200/_cat/indices?pretty
            {

  "error" : {

    "root_cause" : [

      {

        "type" : "security_exception",

        "reason" : "current license is non-compliant for [security]",

        "license.expired.feature" : "security"

      }

    ],

    "type" : "security_exception",

    "reason" : "current license is non-compliant for [security]",

    "license.expired.feature" : "security"

  },

  "status" : 403

}

The problem is that I am left alone, but unfortunately, no mistake is allowed.
I assume I should revert the license to basic, but not sure how to do this. We don't need any license related functions such as LDAP or ML, but I need the basic authentication. I need to get the list of existing indices and templates.
I found the command:

curl -uelastic -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/_xpack/license/start_basic

If I run this command will I have any authentication? Am I able to run this command at all, if there is no security authentication is enabled? Or at first i should set the xpack.security.enabled = false ?
I definitely must protect the data

Thanks for your helping.

[dadoonet (David Pilato)]

Welcome!

To have access to some free security features within the basic license, you will need to upgrade your cluster to at least 6.8 version.

[pantomin (Lazar Mohacsi)]

Hi @dadoonet,
thank you for the quick answer. If I understood well there is no any possibility for basic authentication within the baisc license with ES 6.5. Upgrading is still not possible (yet).
In this case then I need to choose between any authentication method and "accessing our indices list". Did I get right?
How could I backup our currently existing indices and templates without upgrading the cluster? I am happy with switching off authentication for the backup.

[dadoonet (David Pilato)]

@pantomin

In this case then I need to choose between any authentication method and "accessing our indices list". Did I get right?

Yes. Last choice would be to ask your sales rep to extend the platinum license for one more year I guess.

@pantomin

How could I backup our currently existing indices and templates without upgrading the cluster? I am happy with switching off authentication for the backup.

Snapshot and restore is the way to do backup.
You can also start a new cluster with 6.8 (or 7.6) and use the reindex from remote feature.

[pantomin (Lazar Mohacsi)]

Ok, just to make it clear for me. If I don't want the authentication, then is it enough to set the

xpack.security.enabled = false 

in elasticsearch.yml and kibana.yml then restart the services, or I still need to run curl -uelastic -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/_xpack/license/start_basic command?

[dadoonet (David Pilato)]

I believe you will need to do both.