Portworx Essentials FAQ

Portworx Essentials
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What is Portworx Essentials?

  • Portworx Essential is a free forever license to use a limited version of the Portworx Storage Platform. It is a way for users to get started on their cloud native and container journey with the best data storage solution for Kubernetes. Portworx Essentials provides the essential feature set to run stateful workloads in your Kubernetes environment. The details of the scale, feature set and comparison with Portworx Enterprise are described here - https://portworx.com/products/features/

What are licensing terms and how to activate the license?

  • Portworx Essential requires you to register on PX-Central by clicking the ā€œGet startedā€ link - https://portworx.com/products/features/. If you have already registered, you can login using your Portworx account and you will see the steps to create installation spec under the ā€œInstall and Runā€ option. Steps to create the installation spec are similar to Portworx Enterprise

Portworx Essential license is embedded in the generated spec that you will apply on your Kubernetes cluster. Note that the license is limited to 5 nodes and requires internet connectivity on the cluster to connect to PX-Central for activation. Once Portworx is installed and is able to connect to PX-Central, the cluster will be registered to your PX-Central account. You can click the badge next to the user profile icon and see the cluster UUID of the successfully installed cluster.

What are support terms for Portworx Essentials?

  • Portworx Essentials support questions can be submitted here at forums.portworx.com and should be tagged under Portworx Essentials category. It is a community supported version of Portworx platform and we encourage users to respond to questions if they have a solution. Portworx customer success team members will be regularly responding to questions/issues on the forums page.

Can I run Portworx Essentials in production?

  • We recommend you look at the feature comparison matrix and determine if Portworx Essentials fits your production needs. We can help upgrade to Portworx Enterprise so that you can get premium support from our experts in customer success team when running in production.

How many clusters can I set up PX-Essentials with? Can I switch the license to a new cluster?

  • Each user can install only one Portworx Essential cluster. If for some reason, you have to setup a new cluster with Portworx Essentials, you will have to unlink the existing Portworx Essentials cluster using the unlink option (in the cluster activation badge) in PX-Central. Portworx needs to be stopped on the old cluster for the new cluster to be activated with Portworx Essentials license.

How does upgrade to PX-Enterprise work?

  • Portworx Essentials comes with limited overall cluster capacity as well as per host and per volume limits. Also there are restrictions on some features that are described here - https://portworx.com/products/features/. In order to use an unlimited version of the product, you can anytime upgrade to Portworx Enterprise by clicking the ā€˜Upgrade to Portworx Enterpriseā€™ link on the cluster activation badge in PX-Central. If that does not work for any reason, please reach out to support@portworx.com with your cluster UUID.

Can I try PX-DR, PX-Autopilot with Portworx Essentials?

  • No, you will require to upgrade to Portworx Enterprise to try the unique capabilities for Disaster recovery (PX-DR) and capacity management (PX-Autopilot).

Will I lose my cluster data or do I have to migrate my applications/data upon upgrade?

  • No, you can continue to use the same cluster with the upgraded Portworx Enterprise license and there will be no need to migrate data or applications.

My cluster does not allow me to create volumes anymore. What may be happening?

  • There may be two possibilities. Your cluster may not be connected to internet and has not reported to PX-Central for the last 24 hours. In this case, the cluster license may have expired and although the cluster is operational, you will not be able to create any new volumes or add new applications. The other reason may be that you have exceeded your usage limits for cluster capacity and need to upgrade to Portworx Enterprise.

Can I downgrade from Portworx Enterprise to Portworx Essentials?

  • No, downgrade from Portworx Enterprise to Portworx Essentials is not allowed.
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