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Licensing in Containers

Before continuing

Read The Compose Architecture before this page.

For anything running in a container, use an 8-character leased license. Leased licenses are designed for dynamic environments where the gateway's system identity changes between restarts, image upgrades, and volume resets - all of which happen frequently with Docker.

Standard 6-character keys are tied to a system identity computed from the named volume contents, so a docker compose down -v or an image upgrade can invalidate the activation and require manual reactivation. Leased keys avoid this entirely.

Passing the License to the Container​

Add these to your .env file:

IGNITION_LICENSE_KEY=XXXX-XXXX
IGNITION_ACTIVATION_TOKEN=your-activation-token
warning

.env is listed in .gitignore for a reason. Never commit it - your license key and activation token are credentials.

For Kubernetes Secrets (covered in the Kubernetes & Helm guide), use the _FILE variant to load values from a mounted secret instead of plain env vars.

Release the Lease on Shutdown​

Leased activations are tracked server-side. If a container stops without releasing its lease, the activation can stay marked active on Inductive Automation's servers, preventing the same key from being used elsewhere until the lease expires. For Docker, where containers stop and start frequently, configure the gateway to release the lease cleanly on shutdown.

Pass the property as a JVM argument after the -- delimiter in your command: block in docker-compose.yml:

command: >
  -n ${GATEWAY_NAME}
  -m 4096
  -h 80
  -s 443
  -a ${GATEWAY_NAME}.localtest.me
  --
  -Dignition.license.leased-activation-terminate-sessions-on-shutdown=true

The same applies when you graduate to Kubernetes. The Helm chart does not set this by default; append it to the gateway.jvmArgs array in your values file:

gateway:
  jvmArgs:
    - "-Dignition.license.leased-activation-terminate-sessions-on-shutdown=true"

References:

Trial Mode for Labs​

Every lab on this site runs in trial mode. Trial mode gives full functionality for 2 hours; reset it from the gateway's Status page when it expires. No license is required to complete any lab.

Full Reference​

For the complete licensing reference - activation flow, lease check-in intervals, edition selection - see the Ignition 8.3 Licensing and Activation docs.