Digital licensing is new in this Bare Metal Orchestrator release. A digital license is required to activate Bare Metal Orchestrator. Key licensing attributes include start and end date. For pre-paid term customers, it also includes the maximum number of managed entities (RTMs).
A license is associated to a particular Bare Metal Orchestrator system through the Bare Metal Orchestrator cluster ID. The cluster ID is generated after installing Bare Metal Orchestrator and is given as an input while creating the Bare Metal Orchestrator license. Only the Bare Metal Orchestrator global controller requires a license. The subtending local controllers do not require a license.
The license manager runs as a micro service inside the Kubernetes cluster. You need to create an .xml file that contains required parameters to generate a license. A Bare Metal Orchestrator ID (Unique Cluster ID), type of license (trial, premium), managed entities quantity, and duration are required in this .xml file. The license file is customized based on the customer requirements.
Dell generates a license file and this license is then uploaded to the Bare Metal Orchestrator GUI or CLI for activation. The generated license file is digitally signed and cannot be tampered with. Any change in the parameters after the license is generated (that is license type, managed entities quantity, duration, and so on) results in an error.
Once the license is uploaded and activated, Bare Metal Orchestrator is now licensed.
You can upload many licenses, but only one license is active at any given time. At a minimum, when an asset is onboarded, the API checks for a license and if the license is good, it proceeds with the tasks while further checking the available parameters (license type or managed entities quantity). If the license is expired, it continues to perform but will generate a log to indicate that the license has expired. Bare Metal Orchestrator will not deactivate any of its features because of an expired license.
Types of Licenses:
- A trial license starts on the day it is deployed and is valid for six months. The trial license can be deployed on one Bare Metal Orchestrator instance and cannot be reused. The trial license does not restrict the number of devices being managed. If you are deploying a new trial license, you must reset the available duration.
- A premium license enables all features and allows both the pre-paid and post-paid license types of Bare Metal Orchestrator Premium. Based on the contract, it enforces the (device) count and duration with pre-paid license and posts regular updates to DFS when post-paid license is in use.
- A lab or pre-production license enables you to test a new Bare Metal Orchestrator release in a pre-production environment before promoting it to production. The license term of the lab license must match the license term (start and end date) of the production license. This license limits the RTM to 20.
Bare Metal Orchestrator does not allow reuse of expired licenses. Bare Metal Orchestrator defaults to view-only for all devices if the Bare Metal Orchestrator license has expired and no other valid licenses are deployed. Bare Metal Orchestrator generates a notification and a UI banner when the grace period is in use. The grace period is available with trial licenses and its duration depends on the customer contract. Bare Metal Orchestrator generates notifications when:
- Managed entities count has reached/crossed 90% of the maximum allowed by the license
- Managed entities count has reached the maximum allowed by the license
- Managed entities count exceeds the maximum allowed by the license
- License is in a grace period
- License is about to expire in 7 days
- License has expired