your licensing sucks

[Tobias_Elfstrom]

This case is very theoretical. Do you know any customer who runs on VMware ESXi Version 3 (not 3.5).
It is the same mechanic like our 30 days trial.

Oh yes, VMware ESX and ESXi 3.0 is not dead in closed environments. Not by a longshot, not at all.
GSX might be dead (?!) but ESX, heck no.

Just as IBM OS/2 is still run on productions systems... Or old VMS systems...

[JohnGG]

I must agree that all the small to medium sized business people i know never buy new servers every 3 years, its actually the opposite.
Not sure who actually does that because the cost is huge and like it has been said before, if it aint broke dont touch it.

We were approached to renew our ESXi servers at a large cost after 3 years, the warranty ran out on the SAN and servers so we brought a small server to host and replicate using Veeam in-case of SAN failure.
The cost for the extra 2 years warranty for the servers and San would have been $10,000 dollars where as the small server and veeam where < $5,000.
Yes its a risk but business doesn't just keep buying products because of the 3-5 year cycle, thats a sales pitch.

Our last servers where 10 years old and still work to this day!

[michaelryancook]

I think if you are unwilling to keep a copy of your license file, and don't pay for support, then you shouldn't expect to be able to quickly download it off Veeam's site. If a simple support case allows you to get a copy of it then I can't see what the complaint is about. As pointed out earlier there would obviously be a cost for Veeam maintaining a licensing portal.

[tony.grilley]

Its funny you mention the lic as mine says its expired but we paid for it for another year.
Even when i re-add the .lic file it still says expired

This is most likely a V8 key applied to a V7 install. I would recommend opening up a support case for confirmation though.

[robg]

I think if you are unwilling to keep a copy of your license file, and don't pay for support, then you shouldn't expect to be able to quickly download it off Veeam's site. If a simple support case allows you to get a copy of it then I can't see what the complaint is about. As pointed out earlier there would obviously be a cost for Veeam maintaining a licensing portal.

Go back and re-read the start of this thread. Check out how there was no offer whatsoever from Veeam staff to provide this license file unless maintenance was current.

You know what that means? They are trained to encourage maintenance renewals and this is yet another tactic to do so. I would even call it a cheap ploy.

We could also follow your logic further. Should they just delete every user and company account after their support expires? That way there is 0 cost to maintain, right? Or maybe what you are actually saying is that storing a 2KB license file for every customer is just too great a cost.

Or wait, they have to store them in order for people to be able to open support cases in order to retrieve, just no download link. The download link is what costs the most money.

Ridiculous.

[lando_uk]

You buy a Dell or HP server or storage, and they have a 7yr EOL. If you running any business on older hardware and software than that, then having a veeam license that expires after 10 years is the least of your troubles.

As for the maintenance argument, I'd personally hate to work somewhere that didn't have support contracts on critical components, when it hits the fan, 3rd line support can save the day and it's up to the infrastructure guys to convince management to spend the money.

[robg]

You buy a Dell or HP server or storage, and they have a 7yr EOL. If you running any business on older hardware and software than that, then having a veeam license that expires after 10 years is the least of your troubles.

This never had anything to do with the license expiring after 10 years. Someone mentioned that off-hand and it has clouded the issue.

As for the maintenance argument, I'd personally hate to work somewhere that didn't have support contracts on critical components, when it hits the fan, 3rd line support can save the day and it's up to the infrastructure guys to convince management to spend the money.

And even more likely, absolutely nothing will happen and you waste thousands on yet-another "insurance policy" . Whatever happened to per-incident support? If by some freak occurrence something happens, I'll gladly pay 250-500 for the Veeam guys to save the day.

[JohnGG]

Yeh its an 8.x key Tony but does it matter, it still works mate running version 7.

Side note, we used to pay for IBM warranty but it still took 6 weeks for a hard drive to come from the USA.
The warranty was like 5 thousand dollars so we worked out that we could just a whole new HP server for that and we would also have the server up and running in 4 days.
IBM burnt their bridges with us with teh so called "Warranty Support"

[alanbolte]

Yeh its an 8.x key Tony but does it matter, it still works mate running version 7.

Tony's just pointing out that v7 doesn't quite understand having a v8 license file applied to it, so you get the nonsensical 'expired' result. That really has nothing to do with license policy or the other topics of this thread, it's just a lack of forward compatibility at the application level.

[Gostev]

Whatever happened to per-incident support? If by some freak occurrence something happens, I'll gladly pay 250-500 for the Veeam guys to save the day.

Thing is, in most cases, such per-incident support will be of no use, because we don't support outdated product versions anyway (which your scenario assumes is what is being used). That is, hot fixes are only provided for the most current product version. We also support the previous product version - but vast majority of issues you are likely to encounter will either be already addressed in the current version, or will be resolved as a hot fix for the current version.

[robg]

Thing is, in most cases, such per-incident support will be of no use, because we don't support outdated product versions anyway (which your scenario assumes is what is being used). That is, hot fixes are only provided for the most current product version. We also support the previous product version - but vast majority of issues you are likely to encounter will either be already addressed in the current version, or will be resolved as a hot fix for the current version.

An interesting school of thought that is... You are basically saying that it is unwise and unpractical to buy the product for full price and then expect for it to be supported as a long term purchase.

That means that Veeam is sold for a perpetual license but it is really a subscription model in disguise. "Read the fine print."

Why is it so difficult to maintain support for prior versions of a relatively new product? It's not like the old versions were written in the stone ages in the Windows XP or MS-DOS days.

[Gostev]

Why is it so difficult to maintain support for prior versions of a relatively new product?

Basically, it's an extremely costly undertaking due to our quality standards, so it literally makes no business sense for us to do at the moment. We would probably have to at least double our current prices to make such extended support possible, as it means independent development of multiple separate product branches in parallel, due to how our processes work and considering the frequency of our major releases (we are on annual major release cycle).

I am sure one day we will be forced to start providing long term support (we already do this on case by case basis anyway), as we keep penetrating enterprise market further. But you can be sure that the price tag of such extended support product editions will be inline with what you would expect with typical "enterprise software" products. It's no secret that right now, new Veeam purchase costs is often about the same as renewing those legacy "enterprise" backup products (and market-standard support renewal costs these days are 20 to 25% of the new license MSRP).

[sasamarkovic]

I have another thing that I'd like to ask and it goes partly under this "licencing sucks" topic.

I've been using vmware environment and, as many other growing environments where bussiness chooses to add more servers, it requires more licenses for vmware and for veeam as well.
For vmware it is easy. Just add licence, and if you have support and license number, you have supprot for server that uses this license.
But not for Veeam.
If you bought support and it expires, let's say, in 4 months, and bussiness decides to buy you long awaited new licenses for Veeam, you are bound to Merge those new ones with the old, soon to expire, licenses. And what do you get? You get one license (why should you only have one license, why not have separated license for separated servers/socets), and it expires in 4 months, so how can you explain to purchase officer why your support is not 1 year, when you paid for it, but now is 4 months?

How is this situation sorted? You can not expect from customers to always plan to buy new support for new licenses at exact date old ones expire.

Maybe it would be better to somehow provide software to accept multiple license files?

Thanks

S

[lando_uk]

You have to also buy the extra 4 months maintenance on the existing when you buy the new licenses so they all expire at the same time.

It's basically as robg says, "subscription model in disguise" as unlike VMware you can't have some sockets out of support and some sockets in.

TCO is currently cheaper than the other leading backup products though.

[Gostev]

Hi, Sasa. While I don't follow our sales and licensing processes closely, I vaguely remember seeing a document that explain the process you explained... but pretty sure there's in fact a way to match support expiration date for those "soon-expiring" sockets to that of the newly acquired sockets - by purchasing support for the expiring ones, while still accounting for any "remaining" support time on them.

If you have a support case ID where you could not do something like this, please let me know and I will escalate for more info.

[mcardella]

Hi, (case 01121186 ) this case is unrelated but I do not have a case for this licensing issue

This is on the topic of Veeam licensing sucking but a different issue that is making me question the ethics of VEEAM. I am a VEEAM partner (MSP) for a few years with approximately 20-30 clients using VEEAM software of which I have recommended and implemented.I have been a loyal partner of Veeam since I have only recommended VEEAM for all of my clients virtual backups and replication jobs. This past August I setup a new client with a Trial of VEEAM. Instead of getting the 30 day trial key, we received a 7 day trial which is barely long enough for the client to make a decision however, the client gave me the green light to place the order. I place the order and never received the license file. It may have been caught in the spam filter or somehow the email was lost. After 3 months has gone by, it came to our attention that we never received the license file. We asked VEEAM to update the license start date to this month since we never made use of the license, no backups have been running and we have not used support for this server.

Regardless of my complaints to VEEAM, they will not update the support date even though this server \ software was not in use at all and the license was lost in our spam filters \ email. I understand why they would not updated the dates in the case that this was for a support renewal however, this was for a new license and this server has has no backups running since the trial expired.

Any other vendor we use including, Barracuda, SonicWALL, Fortinet, Cisco, Symantec etc. would not have this problem since the activation keys only start taking time away from the minute the license was activated. Veeam on the other hand activated the license before you receive it so if the licensing email they send you get lost, you as the partner \ client get penalized for Veeam inefficient license system. The licensing portal also lists each license within your account but there are over 20 licenses in our portal so its easy to over look.

I am okay with how they make you renew the groups of licenses together, I am somewhat okay with the trial licenses being only 7 days duration instead of 30 days, but I am not okay with how cheap VEEAM is with licensing and I am not okay with how they treat partners who spend tens of thousands of dollars every year buying \ selling their products. I expect this type of treatment for one-time customers with a single license but after dealing with 100s of different software vendors (as a Managed Service Provider since 2002) I can tell you that Veeam doesn't cater to partners and does not care about using fair business practices. Therefore, we will look into competing products where our relationship as a partner will be appreciated more and where we can actually use a better licensing system and where we can get a 30 day trial not a inadequate 7 day trial. VEEAM - stop being so cheap and start valuing your partners more, your partners are probably responsible for most of your success!

[Vitaliy S.]

Let me check the reasoning why trial key for you was only 7 days, as I don't remember any changes made to our trial program.

I place the order and never received the license file. It may have been caught in the spam filter or somehow the email was lost. After 3 months has gone by, it came to our attention that we never received the license file. We asked VEEAM to update the license start date to this month since we never made use of the license, no backups have been running and we have not used support for this server.

Just to make sure I fully understand the situation before speaking to our cloud/MSP sales team - you have placed an order and did use Veeam B&R/didn't backup any VMs during 3 months for this client? Is that correct?

[exodus2000]

I wish I had read your message a long time ago.

I was really happy with veeam for 2-3 years, i had bought essentials for 4 sockets , since I had 2 servers. Bought a third one last month, so ordered another 2 sockets to max out my essentials pack.

Couldn't seem to add the license for the 2 new sockets to my veeam installation, found out I had to merge them , had a support chat , they told me to open a case and now I also get the reply that I suddenly need to renew my support on my older sockets before they will merge my licenses into one for 6 sockets.

The 2 new sockets license were bought on a budget together with the virtualisation server, I don't have any remaining budget to renew some kinda of license. I just assumed that when I ordered 2 extra sockets , that it would work. So now I wasted money on something I can't use and don't have the money to make it work. So now i'm gonna have to go explain that to my boss, which pisses me off, so in the next government meeting with all the IT services, i'm gonna have a talk about this and see if we can get this added to all government resellers as Warning that there is a hidden cost when you buy from them.

[Andreas Neufert]

Sorry to hear that.

I am not a member of Product Management or Licensing Team. From my understanding your mentioned things are correct. If you buy two Veeam licenses and want to bring them together, both need to be under maintenance. But you can run both indicidually on a seperate Backup & Replication Server.

With maintenance fees there commes product (major) updates and support as well. So for example if you need to update your virtualization version, you need a newer Veeam version over time as well. So maintenance is a cheap way to avoid later costs when you update your environment. ... and support helps you in case you face any problems in emergency situations.

Veeam offers monthly maintenane as well. Maybe this can be a way for you to get support for your old licenses and then buy yearly maintenance for all your licenses when you have budget for it.
Hope this post is a bit helpful for you.

CU Andy

[timbo]

We are a small business and purchased 2 VMWare hosts 4 years ago, and were advised that a Veeam Backup Essentials Bundle was the most cost effective option for backing up our system.

We have been extremely pleased with the performance and functionality of Veeam, as well as their technical support, and are now adding a 3rd VMWare host to our system.

We have been paying for support for 4 sockets on 2 hosts, which is what we have, and have tried to purchase a license for the additional host/2 sockets.

We've been told that the Veeam bundle we purchased already covered 6 sockets, but that we can only activate the final 2 sockets if we purchase support for the past 4.5 years for them.

My boss doesn't understand why we have to pay for 4.5 years support for something we've never had - backup functionality for a 3rd host - and wants me to look at other backup options.

I'm perfectly happy with the concept that if you let your support contract lapse and then reactivate it you have to pay a reactivation fee, but we've never paid for any support on these last 2 sockets that could have lapsed.

Talking to sales is like banging your head against a brick wall, they just come back with scripted answers and won't even discuss the matter. Can somebody please explain why I have to pay for 4.5 years of non-existent support?

[Vitaliy S.]

We have been paying for support for 4 sockets on 2 hosts, which is what we have, and have tried to purchase a license for the additional host/2 sockets.

Do you still support licensed (active maintenance) for these 4 sockets now?

[timbo]

Yes we have active maintenance on all 4 sockets until 2017, and have had maintenance since we purchased them.

[Andreas Neufert]

I saw that you bought 6 sockets but you renewed only 4 of them.

Just an idea, I don´t know if it will work or help in any way (I am not responsible for Licenses and Sales). Please let the partner contact the distributor. The distributor can speak with our Renewals Team, maybe they have an idea how we can avoid that you have to bring the old licenses to actual maintenance by buying 4,5 years.

[mkaec]

If B&R maintenance is 20%, wouldn't paying back maintenance on 4.5 years be slightly cheaper than purchasing brand new licenses? I guess brand new licenses come with 1 year of maintenance. So, the actual comparison might be 5.5 years.

Nevertheless, it sounds like the issue with the maintenance should have come up during the attempt to purchase the additional licenses. It sounds like 8 essentials socket licenses may have been purchased. That shouldn't have happened.

I agree that it is not right to charge for new licenses and also insist on back maintenance. I think either they should merge the new purchase into the old license, or they should refund the new purchase so that those funds can be used toward the back maintenance.

[Andreas Neufert]

Jup thats as well an option... You can send a lette of destruction for the 2 licenses and buy new 2 licenses... But this again needs to be discussed between distriubutor and our renewal team.

[timbo]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I asked about removing the 2 sockets and purchasing again, but as we are a small business we purchased the Essentials package, which has a limit of 6 sockets, so can't remove and repurchase as have been told that the destroyed sockets still count and would take us over the 6 socket limit for essentials, and we'd have to move over to the full version which is a lot more expensive.

Sales don't seem to even want to discuss the matter, they just come up with scripted replies. Nice to see that our 4 years of loyalty counts for nothing

[Andreas Neufert]

@Tim, thanks. When you send an LOD as discussed above, I think it will not remove the license out of the license portal, but our license support should be able to send you a new 6 socket license file when you purchased the new 2 sockets. Can you please open a support ticket (select license not technical assistance at the selection) and ask this. Please write the ticket number here so that we have an reference that we can work with. Thanks

[Andreas Neufert]

@Santangelo, too less informations to understand what happened.

Did you buy the normal product instead of the essential version and are now not able to downgrade?

[foggy]

I've also forwarded both requests to the responsible sales teams management asking them to look closer into the reported issues.

[timbo]

Thank you @foggy