Remote clusters for basic/platinum , onprem/cloud license

[Petr.Simik]

Hi,
We have several Elastic clusters on-premises and we plan to create a few new ones on Azure cloud. All of them are self-managed version 8.6.

The purpose of all Elasticsearch clusters is data analysis in Kibana, so I have one main Elasticsearch + Kibana with remote clusters configured to all other elastic clusters.

My question is whether there is any license issue when connecting a remote cluster with basic license with platinum/enterprise licensed server?

In case of security and audit logging, would a platinum server be able to manage remote access to basic licensed clusters?

Thank you

[leandrojmp (Leandro Pereira)]

@Petr.Simik

My question is whether there is any license issue when connecting a remote cluster with basic license with platinum/enterprise licensed server?

Can you provide more context about this?

If you are just using Cross Cluster Search, then you do not have any limitation as Cross Cluster Search works with the Basic license.

If you want to do Cross Cluster Replication, then both nodes need to have a platinum license as this is not available with the basic license.

Also, if you are using ECK, the Cross Cluster Search also needs a license when running on ECK.

@Petr.Simik

In case of security and audit logging, would a platinum server be able to manage remote access to basic licensed clusters?

It is not clear what you mean by manage as Elasticsearch does not have any remote management feature, you need to manage each cluster individually.

Security is available, with limitations, in the basic license, but audit logging will be only available if you have a platinum license or above.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

@leandrojmp

If you are just using Cross Cluster Search, then you do not have any limitation as Cross Cluster Search works with the Basic license.

Well @leandrojmp @Petr.Simik , actually that is not completely accurate (it is if all clusters are self-managed)

If you are using Elastic Cloud and want to use CCS or CCR with self-manged clusters all clusters need to be at the same license level which in this case is Enterprise Level.

That is considered "Cross Environment Replication or Search" you can find this here

See Below:

[leandrojmp (Leandro Pereira)]

@stephenb

If you are using Elastic Cloud and want to use CCS or CCR with self-manged clusters all clusters need to be at the same license level which in this case is Enterprise Level.

Oh, I see.

Never used Elastic Cloud, so I always checked the subscription page.

But from the OP question I understand that everything is Self-Managed, but some are running on Azure instead of on-prem.

If everything is self-managend then at least CCS would work between them.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

Correct:

If everything is Self Managed and non-ECK then CCS is Basic License independent of where the self-managed is running.

CCR is a commercially licensed feature in all deployment models.

[Petr.Simik]

Thank you,
I am looking for cross-cluster search only; I do not need replication at this moment. The idea is to have a single Kibana to access all our Elasticsearch clusters. Our Elasticsearch clusters are used solely for data analysis, and we fill them with time-series data that users create dashboards over.

The idea is to have one licensed cluster for our best/cleanest data and all other clusters with raw data with basic licenses.

All users will use a single Kibana to access all Elasticsearch clusters. Their use case is to use analytics tools of Kibana to access data from all clusters.

Since the primary cluster will be licensed, I can benefit from having advanced security like SAML and Auditing covered.

Is this idea feasible?

Thank you

			  +------------------+                       
			  |    cloud         |                       
			  |    el + kibana   |                       
			  |    (platinum)    |                       
			  +------------------+                       
														 
+---------------+    +---------------+  +---------------+ 
| onprem        |    | onprem        |  | onprem        | 
| elastic 1     |    | elastic 2     |  | elastic 3     | 
| basic         |    | basic         |  | basic         | 
+---------------+    +---------------+  +---------------+ 

[leandrojmp (Leandro Pereira)]

@Petr.Simik

The idea is to have a single Kibana to access all our Elasticsearch clusters. Our Elasticsearch clusters are used solely for data analysis, and we fill them with time-series data that users create dashboards over.

As mentioned in previous posts, if everything is self-managed, than it works, you can have Cross Cluster Search between your clusters.

But if you are going to use Elastic Cloud or Elastic as a Service on Azure/GCP/AWS, then no, you will need an enterprise license for every cluster.

So, you would need to run your cloud cluster as a self-managed cluster in the same way you manage your onprem clusters.

@Petr.Simik

All users will use a single Kibana to access all Elasticsearch clusters. Their use case is to use analytics tools of Kibana to access data from all clusters.

Since the primary cluster will be licensed, I can benefit from having advanced security like SAML and Auditing covered.

Your users will only access the cluster with the platinum license, right? If this is correct, then you will be able to use SAML and Audting.

If they also will have access to the other onprem clusters, then you will not have SAML/Audit in those clusters.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

Hi @Petr.Simik

Apologies but no it is not.

Even if that Platinum cluster is Self Managed Platinum.

All clusters in an "CCS Chain" need to be at the same license level.

I have had rather lengthy discussion on this very topic with product and support and they have made it clear that this is the case.

You should contact your account team for further discussion.

[leandrojmp (Leandro Pereira)]

@stephenb

Apologies but no it is not.

Even if that Platinum cluster is Self Managed Platinum.

All clusters in an "CCS Chain" need to be at the same license level.

I have had rather lengthy discussion on this very topic with product and support and they have made it clear that this is the case.

Is this present in any part of the documentation?

Checking the supported ccs configurations part of the documentation there is no mention about the need to have the same license level, also the subscription page has no notes about it.

If this is really the case, then documentation and subscription page should be updated to reflect this.

Recently I used CCS with a cluster with the trial license, which is Enterprise Level, and another one with the Platinum license, so it is a little confusing to hear that the license needs to be the same level.

[stephenb (Stephen Brown)]

Loong discussion.

No it is not direct / clear in the documents.

Happy to have one on one discussions or direct you to account teams.

[Yang_Wang]

@leandrojmp

Checking the supported ccs configurations part of the documentation there is no mention about the need to have the same license level, also the subscription page has no notes about it.

This is indeed the intended behaviour, though it is not clearly documented or even strictly enforced at code level today. But our contractual intention has always been license parity between CCS clusters. This may get enforced more strcitly in future. Therefore it is better to prepare the clusters like that from the beginning.