Managing your license file

Installations from the public varnishplus/60-enterprise repository require a Varnish Enterprise license file. This page explains how to load, refresh and inspect it. (Installations from the token-enabled repository can skip this page.)

If you don’t have a license yet, contact your account manager or use the contact us page.

Loading a license

There are multiple ways to load a license file in Varnish Enterprise.

Default file path

Varnish will automatically discover the license if it’s placed in its vcl_path, so you can copy yours as /etc/varnish/varnish-enterprise.lic` prior to Varnish startup. and it’ll be found and used.

Environment variable

A path to a license file may be provided in the environment variable VARNISH_LICENSE. Varnish will inspect this variable on startup and load the file from the provided path.

Command line argument

A license file may also be provided on the varnishd command line:

-L /path/to/license

Runtime CLI load

If no license file is loaded, Varnish will start up and do all of its initialization, except for enabling its listen sockets for accepting traffic.

A license file may be loaded at runtime via varnishadm:

# varnishadm license.load /path/to/license

Refreshing a license file

A new license file may be loaded without interrupting service. Issuing

# varnishadm license.load /path/to/new/file

will load the specified file.

It is also possible to issue varnishadm license.load without any file name argument, and the file will be reloaded from the same location as previously specified.

Inspecting license status

Check status

The license.status CLI command outputs a simple JSON response giving the status of the currently loaded license:

# varnishadm license.status
{
  "status": "valid"
}

Show license details

license.show outputs a JSON document containing all properties and the associated values for the currently loaded license:

# varnishadm license.show
{
  "product": "Varnish Enterprise",
  "company": "ACME Corporation",
  "shortname": "acmecorp",
  "shutdown": "2028-06-30",
  "no_restart": "(null)",
  "vtcmode": "(null)",
  "version": "(null)",
  "features": "(null)",
  "expiration": "2028-03-30",
  "signature": "QEErYDuY5chC"
}

Track expiry with varnishstat

The LICENSE.expiry counter in varnishstat shows the number of seconds until the license expires:

$ varnishstat -1 -f LICENSE.expiry
LICENSE.expiry                      60970342     51978.13 Duration until license expires