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Licenses and plans

Four things are separate here, and none of them stands in for another:

  • Your Vera account is where you download the emulator image, the Vera launcher and your license key, and manage your plan. Signing in to it doesn’t activate anything.
  • Your license key is a file, activation-key, that turns on Pro or a trial. The launcher installs it.
  • The launcher’s host identity ties your license to the computer you run it on. Pro needs it, so a key file on its own isn’t enough: Pro starts with the launcher.
  • Cloud credentials are none of these. The emulator needs no real cloud credentials, and the examples use dummy ones.

Free and Pro

Section titled “Free and Pro”
  • Free: start the emulator with Docker, without a key, as in Get started. It runs the Free services, and denies requests to the others with “Vera Ultimate is required for this service”.
  • Pro, or a Pro trial: activate your key and start the emulator with the launcher, as in Activate Pro. It runs every service, Free and Pro.

The emulator’s messages and license check call Pro access Ultimate: “Vera Ultimate” there means the Pro plan. Each cloud’s service list and each service page mark the service Free or Pro:

  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): 17 of 40 services are Free. See which
  • Google Cloud: 15 of 29 services are Free. See which
  • Microsoft Azure: 24 of its 59 API surfaces are Free, across 25 services; some Free services also have Pro APIs. See which

A plan says whether a service runs, not how much of its API the emulator covers: each service page’s API coverage and limitations say that.

Pro doesn’t change what a release includes. Methods a release leaves out answer 501 with “not included in this Vera release” on every plan, and Pro doesn’t add them. For Google Cloud’s alternate API versions, such as beta and alpha, the stable version is the examples’ default, and selected alternate-version methods use the stable implementation. Methods or fields with incompatible schemas can still answer 501, so this isn’t complete coverage of an alternate version. Prices, trials, cancellation and refunds are in your Vera account.

Activate Pro

Section titled “Activate Pro”

Pro and Pro trials start with the Vera launcher. First download and check the launcher, your license key and the image, and load the image, as in Get started. There’s no need to start the emulator without the key first.

If it’s already running from Get started’s docker run command, on the Free plan, stop it. This discards everything you created in it: see Running the emulator.

Terminal window
docker stop vera

Then activate your key and start the emulator with the launcher. Change the key’s path if you saved it somewhere else:

Terminal window
chmod +x ./vera
./vera activate "$HOME/Downloads/activation-key"
./vera start vera:1.2.2-amd64 --detach
./vera status

Choose your system and CPU, as in Get started, so the command starts the image you loaded. --detach makes start return at once, so status runs next: see Launcher commands. The first start binds your license to this computer: your account page shows the license’s bound host, or “No host bound yet” before then. Then check access.

Keep the key file out of code, images, Git commits, screenshots and support requests. Give the launcher its path, never its contents.

Launcher commands

Section titled “Launcher commands”

The launcher’s usage line lists its commands:

vera activate KEY_FILE | start IMAGE [--detach] | logs | stop | status | host

These docs use all but host:

  • activate KEY_FILE installs your license key from the file you downloaded.
  • start IMAGE starts the emulator from a loaded image, by its exact tag, in a container named vera, and follows the emulator’s console. Ctrl+C stops following and leaves the emulator running.
  • --detach makes start return at once instead, so the next command runs. The commands in these docs use it.
  • logs follows the emulator’s console again.
  • stop stops the emulator and removes its container, with everything you created in it.
  • status shows the container’s Docker state, not whether the emulator is ready or which plan is active.

Apart from --detach, the launcher has no options: you can’t set ports, clouds or Docker settings with it. Running the emulator covers the Docker options the Free plan’s docker run command can take.

Check access

Section titled “Check access”

Ask the emulator for its license status:

Terminal window
curl --fail --silent --show-error http://localhost:5003/_license

If curl can’t connect yet, the emulator is still starting: check docker logs --tail 100 vera, then try again. Started with the launcher and a Pro key, the response includes:

Output (selected fields)
{
  "tier": "ultimate",
  "access": "full",
  "reason": "verified_online"
}

access is full when Pro or a trial is active, and free on the Free plan. Check access, not tier: tier names Pro ultimate. The responses hold other fields too, which can vary.

These are the cases checked on Vera 1.2.2:

What you did What the emulator answered What it means
Started with Docker, without a key tier free, access free, reason host_identity_required The Free plan is working. The reason doesn’t mean a key is broken: Pro needs the launcher.
Activated your key and started with the launcher tier ultimate, access full, reason verified_online Pro is active.
Sent a Pro Google Cloud request on Free HTTP 403 PERMISSION_DENIED, “Vera Ultimate is required for this service” The service needs Pro. Activate your key and start with the launcher, then check access again.
Sent a Pro AWS request on Free AccessDenied, “Vera Ultimate is required for this service” The same plan check.
Sent a Pro Azure request on Free HTTP 403 VeraUltimateRequired The same plan check.

A plan denial is different from a method the release leaves out, which answers 501 on every plan.

Online verification

Section titled “Online verification”

Pro needs an internet connection to Vera’s licensing service when the emulator starts, and renews its authorization while it runs.

Replace your key

Section titled “Replace your key”

Use Replace my key on your Vera account. Replacing your key turns the old one off straight away: emulators using it stop renewing and drop to Free within 24 hours. Download the new key, then activate it with the launcher on the computer bound to your license.

An emulator that’s already running keeps using the key it started with, even after activate replaces the file, and its access check can still show full until its authorization runs out. So stop it and start a fresh one. Stopping removes the container and everything you created in it. Change the key’s path if the new file is somewhere else:

Terminal window
# This removes the container and its local emulator state.
./vera stop
./vera activate "$HOME/Downloads/activation-key"
./vera start vera:1.2.2-amd64 --detach
./vera status
curl --fail --silent --show-error http://localhost:5003/_license

If curl can’t connect yet, the emulator is still starting: check docker logs --tail 100 vera, then try again. With Pro or a trial, the response should show access as full. status shows only the container’s Docker state, not whether the emulator is ready or which plan is active. You can download your current key again from your account at any time.

Another computer

Section titled “Another computer”

Your license binds to the computer its first launcher start ran on. To use it on another computer, or if your account page shows a host you don’t expect, get help.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”
Symptom What to check
A Pro service answers “Vera Ultimate is required for this service” The emulator is on the Free plan. Check access, then activate your key and start the emulator with the launcher.
access is free, with reason host_identity_required The emulator has no host identity from the launcher, as when it’s started with Docker. Stop it, then start it as in Activate Pro.
access isn’t full after a launcher start Check that the emulator could reach the internet when it started, that your plan is current, and that you activated your latest key and then started the emulator again. Then get help.
A method answers 501 with “not included in this Vera release” This release leaves it out, and Pro doesn’t add it.
A Google Cloud beta or alpha method or field answers 501 on Pro Only selected alternate-version methods use the stable implementation, and methods or fields with incompatible schemas can still answer 501. Pro doesn’t change that. Use the stable version the service page’s example uses, such as Compute Engine’s v1.