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
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Maximum Portworx Essentials licenses per user | 1 |
| Maximum clusters per Portworx Essentials license | 1 |
| Maximum nodes per cluster | 5 |
| Host type included | VMs and bare metal servers |
| Number of attached volumes per node maximum | 30 |
| Host storage capacity limits | 1TB per host |
| Cluster storage capacity limits | 5TB per cluster |
| Online support | Forum access |
| Telemetry requirement (install/operate) | Users must have telemetry enabled in order to use Portworx Essentials. |
| Licensing | Users must have a Portworx Essentials license (available for free at Portworx Central) |
The storage value you set at the time of deployment cannot be expanded until you activate the trial/enterprise license.
PX-Store
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Container-optimized volumes with elastic scaling (no application downtime) | Included |
| Maximum number of volumes per cluster | 200 |
| Maximum volume size | 1TB |
| Storage performance tiers (high, medium, low) | Included |
| Application-aware I/O tuning | Included |
| Read/Write many across multiple containers | Included |
| Failover across nodes, racks, and availability zones | Included |
| Form storage pools from aggregated volumes across hosts | Included |
| Synchronous Replication | Included |
| Volume Consistency Groups | Included |
Data Management
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| PX-Migrate: Migrate volumes and Kubernetes applications across clusters. | Not included |
| Snapshots of stateful applications | Limited to 5 snapshots per volume |
| Cloudsnap backups to cloud storage | Limited to 1 cloudsnap per day per volume |
| Auto-scaling groups (ASG), including AWS, GCP, Azure. | Included |
Portworx Central
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Cluster management UI | Single user, single cluster |
| Proactive centralized monitoring | Included |
| Cluster management CLI | Included |
| Portworx Central on-premises with license server | Not included |
Advanced Functionality
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Encryption with bring-your-own-encryption | Limited to cluster-wide encryption |
| Disaster Recovery for campus and WAN deployments | Not included |
| Capacity Management with Autopilot | Not included |
Orchestrator
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Scheduler integration: Kubernetes, Openshift | Included |
| Integration with Managed K8S services: EKS, AKS, GKE, PKS, IKS, RKE | Included |
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.
| Feature | Included |
|---|---|
| Maximum number of nodes | No limit |
| Number of volumes per cluster maximum | Only Direct Access volumes up to the cluster limit |
| Volume capacity [TB] maximum | 40 |
| Node disk capacity extension | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Number of snapshots per volume maximum | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Number of attached volumes per node maximum | 128 |
| Storage aggregation | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Shared volumes | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Volume sets | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Limit BYOK encryption to cluster-wide secrets | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Resize volumes on demand | yes |
| Snapshot to object store [CloudSnap] | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Number of CloudSnaps daily per volume maximum | 0 |
| Cluster-level migration [Kube-motion/Data Migration] | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Disaster Recovery [PX-DR] | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Autopilot Capacity Management | no (feature upgrade needed) |
| Bare-metal hosts | yes |
| Virtual machine hosts | yes |
Related Topics
Get started with Portworx Essentials now:
Find answers to common questions on the Portworx Essentials FAQ: