mix Standard and Enterprise License/Backup

[Gostev]

I have addressed the somewhat unreasonable pricing for my scenario, said what the competitors would charge me (hoping to point out how unreasonable your price is). I'd really be happy to see you implement more reasonable pricing for secondary servers (not just for my case) and have the encryption implemented, and I'll continue being a happy customer.

Thank you for this, and from my side I can promise that you'd never regret sticking with Veeam, and that we will always be doing our best to remain #1 solution on the market here in R&D.

One thing we will never do though, is get into the pricing war with companies backed by VC money, and thus not caring to be profitable. We like to be independent (instead of having VC people tell us what to do while they are planning for their exit strategy - because cashing out is the one and only thing VC is about anyway). But even more so, we like to be able to invest in our R&D extremely aggressively. And knowing first hand what percentage of our revenue goes into R&D and support funding, I can absolutely guarantee you that Veeam will never sell our product at 25% of the current price.

So, while I do agree with the word "unreasonable" to characterize the pricing difference, I don't think it's unreasonable because of our price it's only unreasonable because some experienced VC guys are trying to quickly improve customer adoption and sales numbers, as nothing increases company valuation better than showing growth there. You can be sure there is never capital R&D investments when it comes to VC driven companies, those are simply not needed. The faster the money can be made - the better, and they take the easiest way with guaranteed results. We, on the other hand, are building Veeam to last.

That said, believe me - I've been pushing for more flexibility and choice in terms of licensing options for our existing customers heavily lately. I know that a few people in the executive management team will smile if they stumble upon this thread, after all of our discussions on this topic in the past few weeks

And yes, encryption is included in v8, which is just around the corner.

[marama]

Gostev, I mentioned the price difference not so we could start comparing the companies or products, but because the current Veeam licensing model was forcing me to buy an edition I don't need, it's not result of different product or ideologies but of me having to compare apples and bananas. Unitrends is not relevant to my problem, my problem is (as I've stated and you understood) is that Veeam has a product that fits my needs but is not willing to sell it to me, because it pushes me to buy a more expensive edition I don't need - that's the whole point, and I am glad if my problem got recognized (I understand that not everyone might share my scenario). I react the same way as if Mercedes would not let me buy the B-Class arguing that it's because I already have an S-class. OK, I was presented with Veeam view on this, being an IT guy I know there is a technical solution to this and hope to see it resolved, soon. We have Veeam covering our critical VMs and that works fine, as for non-critical VMs there is no pressure for us, so I might use virtuallyGhetto script until the licensing model changes (and I take the issue with the management again - and not get laughed at again for arguing for paying for something we don't need).
Thanx for your support .

[andreas.zeiler]

Hello all,

I'm running into the same problem. I have a customer using Enterprise Plus edition at the central site in combination with NetApp systems and snapshots, and everything is running fine.
Now I must plan a local backup (no replication to central site planned) for four remote office sites with 3 Servers / 6 ESXi CPUs each, managed by the same vCenter as the central site. Combined management of the central and remote sites would require buying additional 24 Enterprise Plus licenses ... no way to argue such an investment for features that are not required or even possible at the remote sites (just a couple of scheduled backups per week, no application item restore required)

Question 1: Would it be possible to set up a separate/additional veeam B&R server at the central site with 24 Veeam"Standard" licenses, connected to the same vCenter server as the "Enterprise Plus" Veeam backup server, but manaing only the 12 remote servers with one backup repository at each remote site ?

Question 2: Is it planned for the future that enterprise manager can manage different editions?

Best Regards,

Andreas

[foggy]

Andreas, you're still not allowed to run different editions within the same physical location. However, I believe you can install a separate Veeam B&R instance in remote site for that purpose.

[the_mentor]

Dear Veeam,

We have few hosts that use shared storage (NetApp) and for these hosts we want to use storage snapshots and the Veeam enterprise plus license.
Also we have a bunch of other hosts that are standalone hosts and therefor we don't have a need for the enterprise plus license since we do not require the features that come with it.

After talking to a sales rep it seems that Veeam doesn't support mixing license types on a single B&R server.
I'm sure other costumers find it an issue as well.
If companies like VMware allows you to mix license types why Veeam doesn't ? We should be able to assign Veeam enterprise plus licenses to the host that use NetApp and the enterprise license to all other hosts.

Please let me know if I'm missing something.
Also if you're a costumer that experience this issue please comment so we can try to get this resolved.

thank you !

[Dima P.]

Hello DeMentor,
I've merged your post to the excising discussions. There is such functionality indeed, however, there is a valid workaround to install multiple VBR instances.

[the_mentor]

Dima,
Based on your reply

Hello DeMentor,
I've merged your post to the excising discussions. There is such functionality indeed, however, there is a valid workaround to install multiple VBR instances.

One thing I really admire about Veeam is simplicity... Veeam is very simple and easy to use and installing multiple VBR instances takes away from that simplicity.
I'm sure it might be a little difficult to implement a per host edition solution but I think its definitely worth it for Veeam as a company.
At my job we needed more Veeam enterprise licenses than enterprise plus and because we couldn't mix we ended going with enterprise licenses only rather than going with a mix of enterprise and enterprise plus and i think that is a huge loss for both sides.
I hope you would end up listening to your client base and find a permanent solution the way you always have.

thank you !!

[Gostev]

Due to the dynamic nature of virtualized workloads, achieving this kind of flexibility would require per-VM, instead of current per-socket licensing with no limits on number of VMs protected. Would per-VM licensing work for you?

[the_mentor]

Cant it be on a per host basis?
The same way it is right now ?
or maybe force the whole VM cluster to have the same license type?

Just disable some features when using a lesser license for example backup from storage snapshots shouldn't work on hosts/clusters with standard/enterprise licenses only on hosts with enterprise plus.

I dont see why its so difficult to enforce...

[VladV]

I haven't been able to get a response from sales yet, and our reseller is confused on how Veeam license so I decided to ask here.

We recently opened a small remote remote office in which we were already copying through Backup Copy + WAN our main site backups. So on the remote server there are basically 2 components: WAN accel and Repo.

In our main site we have an Essentials ENT Plus license for 6 sockets.

Now that we virtualized our remote office we want to back it up, but we do not need the features of Ent Plus. Basic standard is enough.

To achieve this we were thinking of purchasing a separate Standard licence for the hosts and transform the remote Repo + WAN server into a full server with the Standard license.

Can we use the WAN + Repo components on a server that has another license type?

If not, is there an optimal solution for us?

Our reseller quoted and upgrade for the existing Essentials to Full Ent thus eliminating the limitation of 6 sockets and added the needed remote sockets. But this solution is outright stupid (price wise) just to backup a remote location.

[nielsengelen]

Mixing of licenses is not allowed. WAN acceleration is only available in Ent+ so you'll have to upgrade from 6 to 8 sockets.

[VladV]

This is ridiculous. This is a remote location where we do not need the functionality of Ent+.

Can we at least purchase a standard license for that location and keep components separate?

[foggy]

You should be able to install a separate Veeam B&R Standard Edition instance in remote site, however, I'd first check with the sales rep.

[griner]

Good luck with sales / licensing. I have been down that road with them. On both occasions it took multiple emails and threatening conditions to get them to simply accept a reasonable request. We've been Veeam customers for many years and this is one part that they choose to do an extremely poor job at.

[Gostev]

Can we at least purchase a standard license for that location and keep components separate?

Yes, you can definitely have a separate backup installation with it's own Standard Edition license in the remote location.

[Regnor]

It's sad that Veeam can't be more flexible regarding licensing. I understand that mixing licenses would give customers the ability to use higher features for all of their VMs and I don't know how you could prevent that.
On the other hand there are many features which are just necessary for a single VM, host or cluster.
For example Exchange or Oracle; most customers have just one of those Applications in a single VM and don't need anything else from the Enterprise Edition, but still they are forced to go with the expensive license.
A smaller two host test cluster, where Standard would fit, is not possible if you have a higher Edition for the main cluster in use.

Perhaps it would be best to license each feature one by one; increasing the license price by 50$/per feature.
Just kidding;)

[agrob]

good day

is the Situation still the same? still not possible to have different licences on the same backup Server?

Thanks
Best Regards

[veremin]

Nothing has changed for this matter.

[jfried81]

I try to understand this issue: Where can I find the relevant definition of "physical location"? What about two rooms in the same building? How "far" do I have to go to be out of range of my physical location?

And what about two organisations sharing the same room and LAN and wanting to use different versions of VBR?

Thanks for your clarification.

[foggy]

Hello, kindly please address these questions to your Veeam sales representative. Thanks!