Vault
Vault Enterprise licensing
Enterprise
Appropriate Vault Enterprise license required
Vault 1.8 introduced licenses and EULA enhancements that gate enterprise features in Vault. You must have a Vault Enterprise binary (evaluation or non-evaluation) downloaded from releases.hashicorp.com to use an enterprise key. Vault Enterprise licenses do not apply to HCP Vault Dedicated deployments.
Evaluation licenses
Evaluation licenses have a 1-day grace period until the license expires. Once the evaluation license expires, Vault seals and cannot unseal until you apply a valid license.
How licensing works
To receive a Vault Enterprise license, you must agree to an end-user license agreement (EULA). Once you apply the license, the Vault Enterprise binary verifies your license with a EULA check during upgrades and any time a node starts, restarts, unseals with the following results:
| License type | License state | Vault build date | Vault startup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Any | Valid | N/A | Succeeds |
| Any | Expired | Before expiry data | Succeeds |
| Any | Expired | After expiry data | Fails |
| Evaluation | Terminated | N/A | Fails |
| Standard | Terminated | Before expiry data | Succeeds |
| Standard | Terminated | After expiry data | Fails |
Applying security upgrades with an expired license
You cannot properly upgrade Vault with a terminated or expired license. If you have an emergency and need to perform an immediate upgrade to apply critical security patches, reach out to your Vault support contact for a temporary evaluation license. The temporary license allows you to complete the upgrade and apply security patches even if your license has expired.
Additional resources
Automatically load a Vault enterprise license - Configure Vault to automatically load your enterprise license.
Automated license utilization reporting - Learn about the data HashiCorp collects automatically to meter Enterprise license utilization and how to enable or disable automated reporting
Manual license utilization reporting - Learn how to manually export, review, and send license utilization data to HashiCorp through the Vault CLI or HCP web portal.
Anonymous product usage reporting - Learn about the anonymized data HashiCorp collects automatically for product usage reporting and how to enable or disable data collection.