Quick Migration CPU licensing

[SimonGreen]

Hi,

We're just in the processes of introducing a new ESXi host into our environment as part of a consolidation project and our intention was to use the VEEAM quick migration tool to move VM's off a legacy host and onto the new one. We don't have VMotion or Storage VMotion and hence this is perfect for our needs.

Looking at our licensing we are licensed for 6 CPU and hence this is an issue as our current host estate consumes all of these - is there any way of extending this on a temporary basis to include the 2 additional CPU's for the migration process? We will only have 6 CPU's in total when we are complete however we're in a bit of a spot in terms of moving forward..

Any thoughts on how we might achieve this?

Regards,

Simon

[veremin]

You can backup VMs residing on an old host and restore them to a new one afterwards.

Otherwise, you can contact your sales representative to check whether he can provide you with a short-term extended license.

Thanks.

[SimonGreen]

Thanks for this. After some more research..

Given that Quick Migration is supported in VEEAM free edition and that CPU licenses are only consumed when running backups or replication it would appear that I can do this in my current environment anyway?

As far as I can tell I can just Quick Migrate the VM's and then revoke the license on the original host to being backing up from the new one?

Regards,

Simon

[Vitaliy S.]

While we are verifying it with our QC team, you can always use replication job to migrate the VM from one host to another one. Replication jobs do not require any license key for the target host.

[foggy]

Though QM itself doesn't require the license, target hosts are not licensed anyway (if that is your concern). However, if you're planning to temporarily backup VMs from both hosts (in case the migration is performed in stages), you need them to be both licensed.

[SimonGreen]

Understood and thanks for coming back.

We're going to schedule to migrate VM's over a weekend and then remove the licensing from the original host so that we can continue to backup within our license constraints.

Thanks,

Simon

[foggy]

With this approach there's nothing to worry about in terms of licensing.

[pshute]

I hope it's ok to continue this old thread. Our issue is related, so it might be helpful to others with similar issues.

We have two ESXi hosts - an old one where backups were done with Backup Exec, and a new one where we do them with Veeam. We've been gradually migrating servers to the new host, but without vMotion this is very slow and requires a lot of down time. The biggest servers are still to be done, left till last because they'll take so long.

I've discovered that Veeam Free can be used to do the migration without down time. Can we just use our already installed and licenced copy instead of installing the free one? It's only licenced for the new host. What are we allowed to do concerning the old host?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Peter,

Downtime is still possible in Veeam Backup FREE, depends on the migration approach selected.. AFAIK, if you're already running paid version of Veeam B&R, the migration task will fail due to not enough license keys for the source host. As a workaround, you can temporarily revoke license keys from existing host and use spare sockets to do the migration.

Thanks!

[veremin]

Or use replication coupled with planned failover as migration means instead. Thanks.

[pshute]

Thanks. It sounds like we need to try Veeam Free.