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Connect On-Prem Leaders to Cribl.Cloud

If you have an on-prem Cribl Edge environment and a Cribl.Cloud account on certain plan/license tiers, you can configure Connected Environments. This enables you to manage credit consumption for all of your Organizations with the Cribl.Cloud billing model instead of licensing.

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

Accomplish this by creating 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.

This section provides instructions for connecting on-prem Cribl Edge Leaders to Cribl.Cloud.

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 Leader to Cribl.Cloud:

  1. Create a Cribl.Cloud account.


    To set up connected environments, you must have a Cribl.Cloud account on a billing plan that supports this feature. See our documentation: Register Cribl.Cloud Organization.

  2. Decide how you want to connect to the Leader.


    There are two methods you can use to connect an on-prem Leader to a Cribl.Cloud Leader:

    • From the Cribl.Cloud account in Connections > Connected Environments.
    • From the on-prem Leader in Distributed Settings > Cloud Connection.

  3. Purchase a Cribl.Cloud Enterprise Plan with credits.

    • What are credits? Good question! To quote the Cribl.io Pricing page: “Credits serve as the virtual transaction currency in Cribl’s product suite. Each Cribl product has a predefined usage rate, and as you use the products, credits are deducted from your initial pool.”

    • 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.

Configuration Considerations
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Take these considerations into account for your on-prem Leader, allowlists, security groups, and Workspaces:

  • You must be on Cribl Edge version 4.8.2 or newer.
  • Ports: Make sure that port 4200 is open on the Leader, with TCP protocol. See Leader Ports for more information.
  • Proxy: Connected environments don’t have a proxy requirement – you can use SOCKS or HTTP/S.
  • TLS: The connection between the Cribl.Cloud Leader and the on-prem Leader must be encrypted using TLS. When you configure the CRIBL_CLOUD_WORKSPACE_URL environment variable, it will start with tls://, which enforces TLS.
  • Static IPs: For IP address allowlist or security group rules, you can find the static IPs of your Cribl.Cloud Leader in Workspace > Access > Leader NLB IPs. You can also use the nslookup command to obtain static IPs.
  • Workspaces: Workspaces are separate infrastructure. Only one on-prem Leader can connect to one Workspace Cribl.Cloud Leader. For allowlists and security groups, ensure you add each IP address individually as each Workspace has a unique IP.

Add Connected Environments in Cribl.Cloud
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To connect existing on-prem Cribl Edge Distributed deployments to Cribl.Cloud, select an on-prem Leader that is running Cribl Edge 4.8.2 or newer, then use the following steps.

If you have multiple environments, such as staging and production environments when using GitOps, you must connect each environment individually.

  1. On the top bar, select Products, and then select Cribl.
  2. In the sidebar, select Workspace, and then select Connections.
  3. Select Configure New Environment and fill out the following 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

Use a Command-Line Script
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If you’re using the CLI option, follow these steps, in order:

  1. Select Copy Script.
  2. Open a command-line window in the Leader environment that you want to connect to Cribl.Cloud.
  3. Navigate to the $CRIBL_HOME/bin subdirectory.
  4. Paste the script results onto the command line, and run the script.

Use an Environment Variable
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The Environment Variable script populates with the details you enter when you’re configuring a new environment. For example:

CRIBL_DEPLOYMENT="On-prem Stream" 
CRIBL_CLOUD_WORKSPACE_URL="tls://a12bcDEFGHIjKLMnopPqr123@cribl-cloud-account-0a1bcde.cribl.cloud:4200"

If you’re using the environment variable, copy its output, and set it when – or before – you run cribl start. How you set this variable depends on 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 can set environment variables for the cribl user, or you can declare the variable along with the start command. For details, see our CLI Reference.

High Availability Leader Configuration
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Before you configure a connected environment with a High Availability (HA) Leader, ensure you are comfortable setting up and managing Cribl Edge Leader HA. See Leader High Availability/Failover for more information.

When you set up the primary Leader to connect to Cribl.Cloud in an HA environment, set the CRIBL_DEPLOYMENT and CRIBL_CLOUD_WORKSPACE_URL environment variables. You can do this in the Cribl.Cloud UI or using CLI.

For example:

Environment=CRIBL_DEPLOYMENT=aws_leader_prod
Environment=CRIBL_CLOUD_WORKSPACE_URL=tls://large-goat-farm.cribl.cloud:4200

The failover Leader will inherit the configuration from the filesystem changes made by the primary Leader.

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. In the sidebar, select Settings.

  2. On the Global tab, select Distributed Settings.

  3. Select Cloud Connection.

  4. Toggle Join Cribl.Cloud Workspace on.

  5. Fill in the required fields:

    FieldDescription
    Connection URLThe Cribl.Cloud URL to connect to this Leader.
    1. In your Cribl.Cloud Organization, locate the URL field value on the sidebar Workspace > Access tab.
    2. Copy the URL and paste it into the Connection URL field, using the format: main-random-goat-a12bcdef.cribl.cloud.
    Connection portThe port for the Cribl.Cloud Leader. Default is 4200.
    Connection auth tokenThe authentication token for the Cribl.Cloud Leader. You’ll need to get this from the Cribl.Cloud environment:
    1. Navigate to Workspace > Connections and select Configure New Environment.
    2. Copy the value in the Workspace token field.
    3. In the on-prem environment, paste the Workspace token from Cribl.Cloud.

  6. Select Save.

  7. In the Cribl Subscription Services Agreement modal, select Agree to accept the agreement.

  8. In the confirmation modal, select Yes to save changes and restart.

    Once you connect an on-prem Leader to a Cribl.Cloud Organization, the license type changes to a Cribl.Cloud billing account. This means the Licensing page will not be accessible. To return to using an on-prem license, toggle Join Cribl.Cloud Workspace off, select Save, and select Yes in the confirmation modal to save changes and restart.

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 FinOps Center page.

View Usage Data
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  1. In the sidebar, select Organization, then FinOps Center.
  2. Select Usage Overview.
  3. Go to Per Product Consumption and expand either Cribl Edge or Cribl Stream.
  4. Find Connected < Product > GBs In.

View Credit Consumption
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  1. In the sidebar, select Organization, then FinOps Center.
  2. On the FinOps Center submenu, select Plan and Invoices.
  3. 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.