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Version: 3.1

Portworx Essentials license

Portworx Essentials is a free Portworx license with limited functionality that allows you to run small production or proof-of-concept workloads. Essentials limits capacity and advanced features, but otherwise functions the same way as the fully-featured Portworx Enterprise version of Portworx.

The Portworx Essentials license requires that your clusters be connected to the internet and send usage data to Portworx Central. Portworx Essentials clusters connect with Portworx Central once per hour to renew license leases. Lease periods last for 24 hours, ensuring that any temporary interruptions to your connectivity do not impact your cluster.

To get started with Portworx Essentials, sign up and generate a spec on Portworx Central. Licenses for Essentials are generated automatically and activate when your cluster connects to Portworx Central.

Portworx Essentials available features and limitations

The following tables list what features Portworx Essentials includes and any limitations it may have:

Portworx Essentials

FeatureIncluded
Maximum Portworx Essentials licenses per user1
Maximum clusters per Portworx Essentials license1
Maximum nodes per cluster5
Host type includedVMs and bare metal servers
Number of attached volumes per node maximum30
Host storage capacity limits1TB per host
Cluster storage capacity limits5TB per cluster
Online supportForum access
Telemetry requirement (install/operate)Users must have telemetry enabled in order to use Portworx Essentials.
LicensingUsers must have a Portworx Essentials license (available for free at Portworx Central)
note

The storage value you set at the time of deployment cannot be expanded until you activate the trial/enterprise license.

PX-Store

FeatureIncluded
Container-optimized volumes with elastic scaling (no application downtime)Included
Maximum number of volumes per cluster200
Maximum volume size1TB
Storage performance tiers (high, medium, low)Included
Application-aware I/O tuningIncluded
Read/Write many across multiple containersIncluded
Failover across nodes, racks, and availability zonesIncluded
Form storage pools from aggregated volumes across hostsIncluded
Synchronous Replication Included
Volume Consistency Groups Included

Data Management

FeatureIncluded
PX-Migrate: Migrate volumes and Kubernetes applications across clusters.Not included
Snapshots of stateful applicationsLimited to 5 snapshots per volume
Cloudsnap backups to cloud storageLimited to 1 cloudsnap per day per volume
Auto-scaling groups (ASG), including AWS, GCP, Azure.Included

Portworx Central

FeatureIncluded
Cluster management UISingle user, single cluster
Proactive centralized monitoringIncluded
Cluster management CLIIncluded
Portworx Central on-premises with license serverNot included

Advanced Functionality

FeatureIncluded
Encryption with bring-your-own-encryptionLimited to cluster-wide encryption
Disaster Recovery for campus and WAN deploymentsNot included
Capacity Management with AutopilotNot included

Orchestrator

FeatureIncluded
Scheduler integration: Kubernetes, OpenshiftIncluded
Integration with Managed K8S services: EKS, AKS, GKE, PKS, IKS, RKEIncluded

Portworx CSI for FlashArray and FlashBlade license

If you're using Portworx with FlashBlade or FlashArray, you have access to an enhanced version of the Portworx Essentials license. Portworx enables this license when it detects the presence of the pure.json secret and at least one valid set of credentials.

FeatureIncluded
Maximum number of nodesNo limit
Number of volumes per cluster maximumOnly Direct Access volumes up to the cluster limit
Volume capacity [TB] maximum40
Node disk capacity extensionno (feature upgrade needed)
Number of snapshots per volume maximumno (feature upgrade needed)
Number of attached volumes per node maximum128
Storage aggregationno (feature upgrade needed)
Shared volumesno (feature upgrade needed)
Volume setsno (feature upgrade needed)
Limit BYOK encryption to cluster-wide secretsno (feature upgrade needed)
Resize volumes on demandyes
Snapshot to object store [CloudSnap]no (feature upgrade needed)
Number of CloudSnaps daily per volume maximum0
Cluster-level migration [Kube-motion/Data Migration]no (feature upgrade needed)
Disaster Recovery [PX-DR]no (feature upgrade needed)
Autopilot Capacity Managementno (feature upgrade needed)
Bare-metal hostsyes
Virtual machine hostsyes

Get started with Portworx Essentials now:

Find answers to common questions on the Portworx Essentials FAQ:

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