Skip to main content

About Customers

This topic provides an overview of customer licenses, including information about license types, the Customers page in the Replicated vendor portal, and how Replicated uses the customer entitlement information that you provide in licenses.

Overview​

Each customer that you create in the Replicated vendor portal has a unique license ID. Your customers use their license when they install or update your application.

Each customer license includes several fields that uniquely identify the customer and the application, specify the release channel, and define the customer's entitlements, such as if the license has an expiration date or what application functionality the customer can access. Replicated securely delivers these entitlements to the application and makes them available at installation or at runtime.

For more information about how to create and manage customers, see Creating and Managing Customers.

Channel Assignment​

You assign customers to channels in the vendor portal to control their access to your application releases. Customers can install or upgrade to releases that are promoted to the channel they are assigned. For example, assigning a customer to your Beta channel allows that customer to install or upgrade to only releases promoted to the Beta channel. For information about how to assign a customer to a channel, see Create a Customer in Creating and Managing Customers.

Changing Channel Assignment​

You can change the channel a customer is assigned at any time. For installations with Replicated KOTS, when you change the customer's channel, the customer can synchronize their license in the Replicated admin console to fetch the latest release on the new channel and then upgrade. The admin console always fetches the latest release on the new channel, regardless of the presence of any releases on the channel that are marked as required.

For example, if the latest release promoted to the Beta channel is version 1.25.0 and version 1.10.0 is marked as required, when you edit an existing customer to assign them to the Beta channel, then the Replicated admin console always fetches 1.25.0, even though 1.10.0 is marked as required. The required release 1.10.0 is ignored and is not available to the customer for upgrade.

For more information about how to mark a release as required, see Properties in About Channels and Releases. For more information about how to synchronize licenses in the admin console, see Updating Licenses.

Assigning KOTS-Enabled and Helm-Only Customers​

Vendors that support both KOTS and Helm CLI installations define which customers can install with KOTS by enabling or disabling the KOTS Install Enabled entitlement. Customers that do not have the KOTS Install Enabled entitlement can install with the Helm CLI only. For more information, see Creating and Managing Customers.

KOTS-enabled customers cannot install with KOTS unless a release contains the Kubernetes manifests required for KOTS installations. For more information about the required Kubernetes manifests, see Custom Resource Checklist in Onboarding with KOTS. Helm CLI-only customers cannot install a release unless the release contains a Helm chart.

Customers can only be assigned to channels where they can install the head release. As shown in the diagram below, both KOTS-enabled and Helm CLI-only customers can be installed to a channel where the head release contains the required Kubernetes manifests for KOTS releases and contains one or more Helm charts:

KOTS and Helm customers successfully assigned to a channel

View a larger version of this image

To prevent KOTS-enabled or Helm CLI-only customers from accessing a release that they cannot install, Replicated prevents the following channel assignments:

Additionally, Replicated prevents releases from being promoted to a channel if the customers assigned to the channel cannot install the release:

Built-in and Custom License Fields​

Customer licenses have built-in fields and also support custom fields.

Built-in fields are reserved field names. You can specify the values for these fields to define entitlements for the customer. For example, Replicated includes built-in license fields to define the license expiration date, customer name, and application slug. For more information about built-in fields, see About Built-in License Fields.

You can also create custom license fields to define entitlements specific to the customer. For example, you can create a custom license field to limit the number of active users permitted. For more information about creating custom license fields, see Managing Custom License Fields.

License Types​

Each customer license includes a type. The license type is used solely for reporting purposes. A customer's access to your application is not affected by the type that you assign.

The customer types are:

  • Development: The Development type can be used internally by the development team for testing and integration.
  • Trial: The Trial type can be used for customers who are on 2-4 week trials of your software.
  • Paid: The Paid type identifies the customer as a paying customer for which additional information can be provided.
  • Community: The Community type is designed for a free or low cost version of your application. For more details about this type, see Community Licenses.

You can change the type of a license at any time in the vendor portal. For example, if a customer upgraded from a trial to a paid account, then you could change their license type from Trial to Paid for reporting purposes.

Updating and Replacing Licenses​

You can make changes to a customer in the vendor portal to edit their license details, including the license type or the customer name, at any time. The license ID, which is the unique identifier for the customer, never changes. For more information about how to edit customers, see Edit a Customer in Creating and Managing Customers.

Unless the existing customer is using a community license, it is not possible to replace one license with another license without reinstalling the application. When you need to make changes to a customer's entitlements, Replicated recommends that you edit the customer's license details in the vendor portal, rather than issuing a new license. When you update the license in the vendor portal, the customer does not need to reinstall to get the updates, and Replicated KOTS users can synchronize the license from the admin console. Additionally, you can avoid the cost that comes with issuing another license.

For more information about how KOTS users with a community license can upload a different license in the admin console, see Community Licenses.

KOTS License Handling​

This section describes the license handling features for applications installed with KOTS.

Synchronizing Licenses​

When you edit customer licenses for an application installed with KOTS, your customers can use the admin console to update their license.

For online instances, license updates are pulled from the vendor portal when:

  • An automatic or manual update check is performed by KOTS.
  • A customer selects Sync license in the admin console.
  • An application status changes. See Current State in Instance Details.

For air gap instances, because air gap licenses are signed with the updated fields, customers must upload a regenerated license file to the admin console every time you modify license fields. After you update the license fields in the vendor portal, you can notify customers by either sending them a new license file or instructing them to log into their download portal to retrieve the updated license. Then, they can click Upload license on the License tab of the admin console to upload the new license file.

For more information about community licenses, including how KOTS users can update licenses in the admin console, see Updating Licenses.

License Expiration Handling​

The built-in expires_at license field defines the expiration date for a customer license. When you set an expiration date in the vendor portal, the expires_at field is set to midnight UTC on the date selected.

KOTS includes default logic for license expiration handling. By default, a KOTS installation with an expired license continues to run, but KOTS prevents the application from receiving updates. To change the behavior of your application when a license expires, you can can add custom logic based on the values for the expires_at field. For more information, see Checking Entitlements for KOTS.

About the Customers Page​

The following shows an example of the Customers page:

Customers page

View a larger version of this image

From the Customers page, you can do the following:

  • Create new customers.

  • Download CSVs with customer and instance data.

  • Search and filter customers based on whether they are active, by license type, and by channel name.

  • Click the Manage customer button to edit details such as the customer name and email, the custom license fields assigned to the customer, and the license expiration policy. For more information, see Creating and Managing Customers.

  • (KOTS Only) Download the license file for each customer.

  • Click the Customer reporting button to view data about the active application instances associated with each customer. For more information, see Customer Reporting.

  • View instance details for each customer, including the version of the application that this instance is running, the Kubernetes distribution of the cluster, the last check-in time, and more:

    View a larger version of this image

  • Archive customers. For more information, see Creating and Managing Customers.

  • Click on a customer on the Customers page to access the following customer-specific pages:

Reporting Page​

The Reporting page for a customer displays data about the active application instances associated with each customer. The following shows an example of the Reporting page for a customer that has two active application instances:

Customer reporting page in the vendor portal View a larger version of this image

For more information about interpreting the data on the Reporting page, see Customer Reporting.

Customer Details Page​

The Customer details page for a customer displays details about the customer license, including the customer name and email, the license expiration policy, custom license fields, and more.

The following shows an example of the Customer details page:

Customer details page in the vendor portal View a larger version of this image

From the Customer details page, you can view and edit the customer's license fields or archive the customer. For more information, see Creating and Managing Customers.

Support Bundles Page​

The Support bundles page for a customer displays details about the support bundles collected from the customer. Customers with the Support Bundle Upload Enabled entitlement can provide support bundles through the Replicated admin console, or you can upload support bundles manually in the vendor portal by going to Troubleshoot > Upload a support bundle. For more information about uploading and analyzing support bundles, see Inspecting Support Bundles.

The following shows an example of the Support bundles page:

Support bundles page in the vendor portal View a larger version of this image

As shown in the screenshot above, the Support bundles page lists details about the collected support bundles, such as the date the support bundle was collected and the debugging insights found. You can click on a support bundle to view it in the Support bundle analysis page. You can also click Delete to delete the support bundle, or click Customer Reporting to view the Reporting page for the customer.