Manage Confluent Platform Licenses Using Control Center

License Manager provides convenient centralized management of Confluent licenses. The License Manager feature is enabled by default.

As of Confluent Platform versions 5.2 and later, you are notified of license expiration dates with notifications for both trial and enterprise licenses. In addition, the developer license provides unlimited use of commercial features in a single-broker development environment. Upgrading to the most current version 7.8 is strongly recommended.

This documentation pertains to managing licenses for Confluent Platform and its proprietary components, including Confluent evaluation licenses.

For information about Confluent Community and Apache 2.0 licenses, see Confluent Community License and Apache 2.0 License respectively.

Tip

For complete license information for Confluent Platform, see Manage Confluent Platform Licenses.

Entering a license in Confluent Platform commercial components

If the Confluent Platform configuration has only one broker, the developer license is automatically applied by License Manager.

If a second broker (or more) is added, License Manager starts a trial license, and the 30 day countdown to the trial expiration begins.

Enterprise licenses (subscriptions) must be entered by the purchaser.

For Control Center, the license key can be entered in the Control Center License tab, or in the control-center.properties file.

Each licensed component requires a valid license key to start up. After the component starts up, it checks the license topic to use the latest valid license key. See Configure component licenses for details.

License Manager also logs the license information, including expiration, and adds warning messages to the log 15 days before expiration. Warning messages will also be shown in Confluent Control Center leading to to a license expiration.

Enterprise license expiry notifications

The License Manager checks the license status daily. At 90 days before a license expiration date, a notification message prominently displays within the Control Center application the number of days remaining for the license. As the expiration date approaches, notifications become more persistent at the following countdown intervals:

  • 90 days: When the approaching license expiration date is in 90 days or less, a dismissible notification appears in the Control Center banner area. After it’s dismissed, the banner notification does not appear again until the expiration date is in 30 days or less.
  • 30 days: When the approaching license expiration date is in 30 days or less, a dismissible notification appears in the Control Center banner area. After it’s dismissed, the banner notification does not appear again until the expiration date is in 7 days or less. In addition, an exclamation point displays in the License tab along with a non-dismissible notification.
  • 7 days: When the approaching license expiration date is in seven days or less, a dismissible notification appears in the Control Center banner area. Dismissing the banner notification must be done daily (if you don’t want to view it) until the license expiration date has arrived. In addition, an exclamation point displays in the License tab along with a non-dismissible notification. On the last day, the notice counts down the last 24 hours until expiration.
  • 0 days (expired): After the license has expired, the banner notification appears in the Control Center application and cannot be dismissed until a new license is applied. The message indicates how long the license has been expired. After applying a new license, the notifications disappear until the 90-day checkpoint starts another countdown cycle.

Renew your license prior to its expiration date to continue using Confluent Platform without interruption. Contact Confluent Support to renew the license.

Trial license expiry notifications

Notifications for a trial license start immediately on the first active day of the 30-day trial. The daily notifications are persistent in the Control Center application banner and cannot be dismissed.

When a trial license expires, Confluent Platform ceases to operate as detailed in Renew licenses. A message prompts you to purchase a license.

  1. Click Purchase License to purchase an enterprise license and continue using Confluent Platform.
  2. Click Register License to enter your newly purchased license in the License tab. For details, see Applying an enterprise Confluent Platform license in the Control Center License tab.

Viewing license information in Control Center

From within Control Center, you can view license information and check license status at any time.

Important

If RBAC is enabled, the SystemAdmin role must be granted to a user on the Kafka cluster that is running Metadata Service (MDS) in order to view or edit a license in the Control Center web interface. For more information, see Configure RBAC for Control Center on Confluent Platform.

If License Manager has been disabled, you cannot access the License tab.

To view license information:

  1. In the upper-right corner of Control Center, click the menu icon to open the Administration menu.
  2. Click About Control Center.
  3. Click the License tab.

The License Key pane displays the license key, type of license, Customer ID (if applicable), and the license expiration date (if it’s not a Developer License).

Confluent Platform License in Control Center

Purchasing a Confluent Platform license

You can request purchase of an enterprise license from within the Control Center. Request a license if you want to upgrade to an enterprise license from a trial license, or if your trial or enterprise license is about to expire or has expired and needs to be renewed.

  1. In the upper-right corner of Control Center, click the menu icon to open the Administration menu.
  2. Click Purchase License. The Confluent Support Portal opens. You can renew or purchase your license with help from the support team.

After you receive the license, apply the license key.

Applying an enterprise Confluent Platform license in the Control Center License tab

When you apply a valid Enterprise license, it takes effect immediately and does not require stopping or restarting services. You can apply a new license key to an enterprise license that is about to expire or has expired.

Important

If RBAC is enabled, the SystemAdmin role must be granted to a user on the Kafka cluster that is running Metadata Service (MDS) in order to view or edit a license in the Control Center web interface. For more information, see Configure RBAC for Control Center on Confluent Platform.

From the License tab, you can apply an enterprise license key to a trial license prior to its expiration date.

An enterprise license can be applied over a developer license at any time.

Applying a license key in the License tab does not update the license string property in the control-center.properties file. However, applying a license key in the control-center.properties file does update the license key displayed in the License tab.

The applied license key is visible in the Control Center log.

To apply a license in the License tab:

  1. In the upper-right corner of Control Center, click the menu icon to open the Administration menu.
  2. Click About Control Center.
  3. Click the License tab.
  4. Clear the existing key. The Enter license key prompt appears.
  5. Paste the license key provided by Confluent into the License Key pane.
  6. Click Apply License.
    • If the applied key is invalid, an invalid key entered message appears in red below the License Key pane. Double-check the key and try again.
    • If the applied key is valid, a license has been applied message appears in a light blue banner. Click x to dismiss the banner.
  7. Click the Confluent logo in the upper-left corner to navigate back to Control Center monitoring.

Applying a Confluent Platform license in a Control Center properties file

If License Manager has been disabled, or a trial license has expired and the License tab cannot be accessed, use this alternative legacy method to enter a license key.

Besides using the License tab in the Control Center Administration UI, you can set the license key in the confluent.license property of the appropriate control-center.properties file on startup. Enter either the license key or a path to the license key file.

Applying a license key in a control-center.properties file updates the license key displayed in the License tab UI. Applying a license key in the License tab UI does not update the license string property in the control-center.properties file.

The applied license key is visible in the Control Center log.

To apply a license key for Control Center using configuration properties:

  1. Open the control-center.properties file for your environment.

  2. In the Control Center Settings section, locate License string for the Control Center. Remove the hash # to uncomment the confluent.license option.

  3. Enter the license value or a path to a file that contains the license.

    confluent.license=/path/to/license/file

  4. Restart Control Center and pass in the properties file for the configuration to take effect:

    ./bin/control-center-stop
./bin/control-center-start ../etc/confluent-control-center/control-center.properties

For more details on Control Center configuration options, see Control Center Configuration Reference for Confluent Platform. For more information about restarting Control Center and passing in its properties files, see Control Center Configuration Examples for Confluent Platform.

Enabling and disabling the Control Center License Manager feature

License Manager is enabled in Control Center by default.

License Manager can be disabled as a preventative measure against potential installation-wide license issues within an organization.

After disabling License Manager, the License tab in the Control Center Administration UI cannot be accessed by any users. Enter the license key using an Applying a Confluent Platform license in a Control Center properties file.

To disable License Manager in Control Center:

  1. Set the confluent.controlcenter.license.manager.enable option in your control-center.properties file to false.

    ...
confluent.controlcenter.license.manager.enable=false
...

  2. Make the change in the appropriate Control Center properties file or files configured for your environments, including control-center-dev.properties or control-center-production.properties. The properties files are located in /path-to-confluent/etc/confluent-control-center/.

  3. Restart Control Center and pass in the properties file for the configuration to take effect:

    ./bin/control-center-stop
./bin/control-center-start ../etc/confluent-control-center/control-center.properties

To enable License Manager again, set the confluent.controlcenter.license.manager.enable option back to true and restart Control Center with the updated properties file.

Viewing the Control Center log for License Manager information, warnings, or errors

License Manager configuration information and notification warnings appear in the Control Center log. The log is sent to stdout by default.

Tip

For production environments, configure log4j to manage multiple rolling logs. For more details, see Manage Control Center Logs for Confluent Platform.

To view the Control Center log in stdout using the confluent local services control-center log command:

confluent local services control-center log

When License Manager is enabled, an entry in the log indicates enabled status:

confluent.controlcenter.license.manager.enable = true

The version of License Manager also appears in the log:

confluent.controlcenter.license.manager = _confluent-controlcenter-license-manager-5-5-0