Gravwell License System

Gravwell provides several license tiers that enable additional features and capabilities. The most basic license tier is the Community Edition and the most advanced tier is the Unlimited license. The Community Edition license allows limited ingest on a single indexer; it is the only license tier that does not have unlimited ingest.

Gravwell installations are licensed using a license file that is located at the path /opt/gravwell/etc/license by default. The license location can be controlled in the gravwell.conf file by setting the License-Location variable in the [Global] configuration block. Gravwell will validate the license at each startup and periodically check it.

Installing a License

A license can be installed via the GUI, the CLI, or by simply copying the license file to the appropriate location. Only administrative users can update the license via the GUI or CLI. At startup, if no license is installed or the current license is invalid the system will wait for a valid license to be installed. The GUI will prompt for a license upload and wait for a valid license before completing startup. The license installation API validates the provided license and will not allow you to install an invalid license.

If you use the CLI or GUI to install a license Gravwell will distribute the license to all connected indexers automatically. Gravwell will also validate the installed license for each indexer and update if necessary at each connection. That means that if you bring a new indexer online it will automatically receive the appropriate license when the webserver connects.

Updating a License

Updating a Gravwell license can be performed using the CLI or GUI without restarting Gravwell, but if you just copy the license file to the appropriate directory you must restart Gravwell in order for the license to be reloaded. Only administrators can update the license file through the GUI or CLI. To update the license, log into Gravwell as an administrator and navigate to the license section under the administrator panel. The License page will provide details about your license and its expiration date, select the new license file and upload it to update the webserver and all connected Gravwell indexers.

License Expiration

All Gravwell licenses except the Free edition have an expiration date and once a license has expired Gravwell will not start. A license expires in four discrete steps:

1. Warning about upcoming expiration

2. Expiration grace period

3. Ingest is disabled

4. Search is disabled

Prior to expiring Gravwell will post a notification in the GUI warning that the license is about to expire, once the expiration date is reached there is a 14 day grace period where Gravwell is fully functional. The grace period allows you to continue using Gravwell, but if you restart the Gravwell indexer or webserver it will stop and wait for a valid license. Once the Grace period has expired Gravwell will disable ingest, in this state you can still query your data but Gravwell will not ingest any new data. After the query grace period expires Gravwell will disable search functionality.

Gravwell will never delete data due to license expiration, all stored data, resources, dashboards, and query history is preserved. If a new license is installed everything will be right where you left it.

Here is a handy table that explains the events leading up to and after license expiration.

Event	Description	Time to License Expiration
Warning 1	A notification indicating that the license will expire in less than 30 days	T - 30 days
Warning 2	A notification indicating that the license will expire in less than 15 days	T - 15 days
Expiration	A notification indicating that the license is expired, 14 day grace period begins	T - 0
Ingest Disabled	Ingest is disabled and a notification indicating that the license is expired	T + 15 days
Query Disabled	Searching is disabled and a notification indicating that the license is expired	T + 30 days

Gravwell License Types

Type	Identifier	Basic Features	Unlimited Ingest	Cluster	Replication	CBAC	HA Webservers	SSO	Notes
Free	free	✅							Free with 2GB/day ingest, no sign-up required, non-commercial use only, never expires.
Community Edition	community	✅							Free signup with 13.9 GB/day ingest, authorized for commercial use, free licenses with instant delivery.
CE Advanced	community	✅							Free signup with 50 GB/day ingest, authorized for commercial use, free license after validation. Business email required.
Pro	single	✅	✅						Single indexer, unlimited ingest, limited features.
Enterprise	single	✅	✅		✅	✅		✅	Single indexer, full feature set, offline replication supported.
Cluster	cluster	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Cluster deployment with online replication, distributed webservers, and full feature set.
Unlimited	unlimited	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	Cluster deployment no limit on indexer count; the go nuts license tier.
Cloud	cloud	✅				✅		✅	✅

🗸 - rate limited

✅ - full support

- Gravwell managed

Free Edition Feature Availability Warnings

As illustrated above, not all features are available when using the Free edition. Gravwell will display warning messages if it detects state that is incompatible with the Free version.

Please consult the following table for advice on resolving Free edition availability warnings, should you encounter them.

Message	Fix
Overwatch enabled	Ensure you’re not running an Overwatch webserver
<N> Remote-Indexers configured	Ensure your gravwell.conf has no more than one remote indexer configured
CBAC enabled	Ensure Enable-CBAC is not set in your gravwell.conf (CBAC docs)
Remote Datastore enabled	Ensure Datastore is not set in your gravwell.conf (Datastore Server docs)
Replication configured	Ensure your gravwell.conf does not have a replication section