License and License keys v1

License keys are a legacy management mechanism for EDB Postgres for Kubernetes. You do not need a license key if you have installed using an EDB subscription token, and in this case, the licensing commands in this section can be ignored.

If you are not using an EDB subscription token and installing from public repositories, then you will need a license key. The only exception is when you run the operator with Community PostgreSQL: in this case, if the license key is unset, a cluster will be started with the default trial license - which automatically expires after 30 days. This is not the recommended way of trialing EDB Postgres for Kubernetes - see the installation guide for the recommended options.

The following documentation is only for users who have installed the operator using a license key.

Company level license keys

A license key allows you to create an unlimited number of PostgreSQL clusters in your installation.

The license key needs to be available in a Secret in the same namespace where the operator is deployed (ConfigMap is also available, but not recommended for a license key).

Once the company level license is installed, the validity of the license key can be checked inside the cluster status.

kubectl get cluster cluster_example -o yaml
[...]
status:
  [...]
  licenseStatus:
    licenseExpiration: "2021-11-06T09:36:02Z"
    licenseStatus: Trial
    valid: true
    isImplicit: false
    isTrial: true
[...]

Kubernetes installations via YAML manifest

When the operator is installed in Kubernetes using the YAML manifest, it is deployed by default in the postgresql-operator-system namespace.

Given the namespace name, and the license key, you can create the config map with the following command:

kubectl create configmap -n [NAMESPACE_NAME_HERE] \
    postgresql-operator-controller-manager-config \
    --from-literal=EDB_LICENSE_KEY=[LICENSE_KEY_HERE]

Operator pods will need to be recreated to apply the new configuration. You can use the following command:

kubectl rollout restart deployment -n [NAMESPACE_NAME_HERE] \
    postgresql-operator-controller-manager

Cluster level license keys

Each Cluster resource has a licenseKey parameter in its definition. You can find the expiration date, as well as more information about the license, in the cluster status:

kubectl get cluster cluster_example -o yaml
[...]
status:
  [...]
  licenseStatus:
    licenseExpiration: "2021-11-06T09:36:02Z"
    licenseStatus: Trial
    valid: true
    isImplicit: false
    isTrial: true
[...]

A cluster license key can be updated with a new one at any moment, to extend the expiration date or move the cluster to a production license.

License key secret at cluster level

Each Cluster resource can also have a licenseKeySecret parameter, which contains the name and key of a secret. That secret contains the license key provided by EDB.

This field will take precedence over licenseKey: it will be refreshed when you change the secret, in order to extend the expiration date, or switching from a trial license to a production license.

EDB Postgres for Kubernetes is distributed under the EDB Limited Usage License Agreement, available at enterprisedb.com/limited-use-license.

EDB Postgres for Kubernetes: Copyright (C) 2019-2022 EnterpriseDB Corporation.

What happens when a license expires

After the license expiration, the operator will cease any reconciliation attempt on the cluster, effectively stopping to manage its status. This also includes any self-healing and high availability capabilities, such as automated failover and switchovers.

The pods and the data will still be available.