Remote Cluster Enterprise feature?

[antex]

Hi,
I want to setup cross-cluster search in my self-managed cluster on Kubernetes using ECK. According to https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions this should be possible with the OpenSource license. But when I try to setup a remote cluster (which is necessary for cross-cluster search) I get: Remote cluster is an enterprise feature. Enterprise features are disabled.

Update: It seems just the https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-on-k8s/1.2/k8s-remote-clusters.html#k8s-remote-clusters-connect-internal feature which makes connecting two clusters both managed by the operator is disabled without a license. A manual setup as in https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/cloud-on-k8s/1.2/k8s-remote-clusters.html#k8s-remote-clusters-connect-external works. Is this intended?
Cheers
Andreas

[Emanuil (Emanuil Tolev)]

Hi @antex, welcome to the community forums!

cross-cluster search in my self-managed cluster on Kubernetes using ECK. According to Subscriptions | Elastic Stack Products & Support | Elastic this should be possible with the OpenSource license

Let’s unpack this a bit :). Cross-cluster search in your self-managed cluster is definitely possible using the open-source version. You download Elasticsearch, set it all up, configure remote clusters, and you’re good to go, no licence.

ECK’s benefit is many Kubernetes best practices and operational knowledge encapsulated into a system. ECK makes the vast majority of that knowledge available for free. There are some Enterprise features though, and remote clusters is one of them.

Cross-cluster search is still completely free to use if you set everything up yourself, but using ECK isn’t that - so cross-cluster search on ECK is an Enterprise feature.

That said, we agree the subscriptions page could be clearer and use a review when it comes to ECK and explaining what it provides, the team is looking into it.