Subscriptions
Subscriptions - why everybody should buy one
Proxmox Virtual Environment (aka PVE) is free open software, see Under GPL licence for info about license, source etc.
Anyway, the company behind PVE (Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH) states clearly (see this forum sticky post) that <<Proxmox VE Support Subscriptions - and why everybody should buy one: Every Open Source project needs to be financed by a strong company behind, and that is Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH in our case. The strong ecosystem around the project guarantees a long term stability, good code quality and fast bug fixing and very important - the development of new features.>>
Your PVE node/cluster will work even if you have no subscription, and you will get support through the forums too (by PVE team and users/volunteers), but:
- you will get a message each time you log into each node's web gui ("You do not have a valid subscription for this server. Please visit www.proxmox.com to get a list of available options.")
- you will not be able to access the entreprise (stable) repositories
- you will not get support in any other way (Customer Portal, SSH)
- you will not get any support tickets
If you understand the value of the work provided by PVE team by creating, maintaining and evolving a powerful system like PVE, and supporting anyone through community forums, you should buy subscription for (at least) your production systems): you'll get the benefits in the future.
Available subscriptions
There are different subscription levels (see http://www.proxmox.com/proxmox-ve/pricing), with pricing related to CPU & month.
(price / CPU & month) x (sockets count) x (subscription months)
By "CPU" it's meant physical socket used, ie what is the output of this command on the PVE command line, on each node:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "physical id" | sort | uniq | wc -l
if it outputs 2, then you have 2 socket on that node, so your subscription for that node will be, eg (community subscription at the date of writing):
4.16 eur x 2 sockets x 12 monts = 99,84 eur
Pretty much affordable isn't it?
You need to have enough sockets licenced for all the nodes under subscription, eg if you have:
- 3 nodes with 2 socket each
you need
- 6 socket licensed in all (it's the same if is 1 subscription for 6 sockets or 3 subscriptions for 2 sockets each, the price is the same)
Subscription keys
Once you pay for subscription, you will get "subscrition keys" tha musto be uploaded to your nodes. You can do this through the web gui:
- select a node
- select "subscription" tab
- click the "upload subscription key" button
- paste there your "subscrition key" code, and press OK
Then you can enable "enterprise repositories" as in http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Package_repositories Note: it will take some time (a few hours at least) for your subscription to be registered, so don't expect "enterprise repositories" to work immediately! Apart from that, if you feel your subscription is not working, open a request via https://shop.maurer-it.com/contact.php.