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Connect On-Prem Leaders to Cribl.Cloud Billing

For full access to Connected Environments, upgrade Cribl Edge to 4.8.2 or newer.

If you have an on-prem Cribl Edge environment and an Enterprise Cribl.Cloud account, you can use the Connected Environments option to establish a connection between the on-prem Leader and the Cribl.Cloud Leader. Then, use the Connections page in your Cribl.Cloud account to manage credit consumption for all of your on-prem environments from one Cribl.Cloud interface. This feature is called Universal Subscription.

The Connected Environments UI
The Connected Environments UI

This replaces the on-prem license, and gives you the flexibility to maintain your on-prem deployments without managing multiple licenses and tracking spend across environments.

An on-prem Cribl Edge environment consists of at least one Leader Node (the control plane) and one or more Fleets.

Connecting your on-prem Leader to Cribl.Cloud allows you to:

  • Monitor credit consumption for each of your on-prem Cribl Edge environments from one user interface.
  • Create a connection between the Cribl Edge on-prem Leader and the Cribl.Cloud Leader, which receives billing and usage metrics from the on-prem Leader.

Limitations of the Universal Subscription Feature
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Connecting environments has some usage limitations:

  • You must opt in to the new Cribl.Cloud UI experience.
  • The Universal Subscription feature is available only for Enterprise Cribl.Cloud accounts.
  • Single-instance deployments of Cribl Edge aren’t eligible for a Universal Subscription.

Before You Begin Connecting On-Prem Leaders
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There are a few tasks you must complete before you can start connecting your on-prem Leaders to Cribl.Cloud:

Create a Cribl.Cloud Account
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To use Connected Environments, you must have a Cribl.Cloud account on an Enterprise plan. See our documentation on Initial Cribl.Cloud Setup.

Decide How You Want to Connect to the Leader
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There are three ways to enable a Cribl.Cloud to on-prem Leader connection:

  • From the Cribl.Cloud account in Connections, Connected Environments.
  • From the on-prem Leader in Distributed Settings, Cloud Connection.
  • Using the command line or environment variable, from either the Cribl.Cloud Leader or on-prem Leader.

The setup instructions in this article will cover each of the connection options.

Purchase Cribl.Cloud Enterprise Plan with Credits
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Universal Subscription gives you the option to manage an existing on-prem license with Cribl.Cloud credits.

To do this, contact your sales team, who will help you convert your license to credits.

Add Connected Environments in Cribl.Cloud
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To connect existing on-prem deployments of Cribl Edge to Cribl.Cloud, you must be using the new Cribl.Cloud user interface. You can opt in to the new experience on an Enterprise plan.

Connect an Existing On-Prem Environment
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To add a connection to one of your existing on-prem Leaders:

  1. Under Workspaces in the global navigation pane, click Connections.

  2. Click Add environment and fill out the fields:

    FieldDescriptionExample
    Environment name
    		A name for your environment. This name will display on the Connected Environments page. You can search for and filter environments by name.Goat Farm East Production
    Workspace hostname/ID
    Hostname of your Cribl.Cloud Workspace.
    This field is read-only.    		example.goat-farm-prod.cribl.cloud
    Workspace port numberPort number that the Workspace Leader uses to communicate with the on-prem Leader.4200
    Workspace tokenThe auth token of the Cribl.Cloud Leader. This field is read-only and is automatically populated.a12bcDEFgHiJKLmnOpQRstuvw3x4z56
    Script typeThe format of the script to connect to the on-prem Leader:
    • Environment variable
    • CLI
    		Environment variable:

    CRIBL_DEPLOYMENT=“Goat Farm West Production” 
    CRIBL_CLOUD_WORKSPACE_URL=“tls://a12bcDEFgHiJKLmnOpQRstuvw3x4z56@example.goat-farm-prod.cribl.cloud:4200”
    CLI:

    ./cribl cloud-workspace 
    -d “Goat Farm West Production” 
    -H example.goat-farm-prod.cribl.cloud 
    -p 4200 
    -u a12bcDEFgHiJKLmnOpQRstuvw3x4z56

  3. If you’re using the CLI option:

    1. Click Copy Script.
    2. Open a command-line window and make sure you’re connected to the Leader of the environment you want to connect to Cribl.Cloud.
    3. Paste the script results into the command line and run it.

  4. If you’re using the Environment variable, copy the environment variable output and have it set when you run cribl start. How you set this variable depends on the setup of your deployment.


    For example, if your Cribl Edge deployment is running in a container, set the environment variable in the container via run call or configuration.


    If you’re running your own server, you might have environment variables set for the cribl user, or you might declare the variable along with the start command. For more information, see our docs: CLI Reference

Enable the On-Prem Leader Connection to Cribl.Cloud
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You can connect a Cribl Edge Leader to an existing Enterprise Cribl.Cloud Organization.

  1. Log in to your Cribl Edge account as an Admin.

  2. Navigate to Global Settings, then select Distributed Settings.

  3. Select Cloud Connection.

  4. Toggle Join Cribl.Cloud Workspace to Yes and accept the subscription agreement.

    Once you connect an on-prem Leader to a Cribl.Cloud Organization, the license type changes to a Cribl.Cloud billing account and the Licensing page will not be accessible. To return to the on-prem license model, toggle Join Cribl.Cloud Workspace to No.

  5. Fill in the required fields:

    FieldDescription
    Connection URLThe Cribl.Cloud URL to connect to this Leader. You can find this in the Access menu of your Cribl.Cloud account.
    Connection PortThe port for the Cribl.Cloud Leader. Default is 4200.
    Connection Auth TokenThe authentication token for the Cribl.Cloud Leader.

Explore Credit Consumption for Connected Environments
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Now that you have a successful connection to your Cribl.Cloud Organization, you can view the incoming usage data and credit consumption for your on-prem and Cloud deployments of Cribl Edge. You must be an Organization Owner to view this data.

For more information on Cribl.Cloud billing, go to the Cloud Billing and Usage page.

View Usage Data
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  1. In Cribl.Cloud, navigate to the Billing & Usage page, and select Usage.
  2. Select the product drop-down to choose a Connected Deployment of Cribl Edge.

On this page, you can view GB in and GB out for the connected environment.

View Credit Consumption
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  1. In Cribl.Cloud, navigate to the Billing & Usage page, and select Plan & Invoices.
  2. In Monthly Usage History, expand the Billing Date and scroll to the Connected Environments table.

Here, you will see each on-prem environment that is connected to this Cribl.Cloud Organization, and the credits each environment is consuming.