Veeam Essentials licensing: CPU sockets or cores?

[onderhold]

I'm evaluating backup solutions for VMware environments and I'm really annoyed (to say the least) that the licensing description on the page "http://www.veeam.com/smb.html#fragment-7" tells me clearly that (cit.) "Veeam Essentials is licensed per VMware vSphere Essentials deployment and provides 6 CPU sockets of each Veeam product in the bundle", just to learn afterwards when contacting sales that socket in VEEAM speech means 6 cores of a CPU.
VEEAM should quickly update this description and be precise. More potential customers may feel beeing taken advantage of.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Ernst,

It seems like there was a slight misunderstanding between you and our sales rep... as “CPU Socket(s)" means a single, physical chip that houses not more than an agreed-upon number of processor cores on a Managed Server as part of a Transaction, in other words CPU Sockets are not equal to CPU Cores.

For more info, you may look at EULA page: http://www.veeam.com/eula.html

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Moved this to the new topic, as this was slightly off-topic in the previous location. Veeam Essentials bundle is for up to 3 servers, with up to 2 physical CPU sockets in each, with up to 6 cores in each CPU. This means up to 36 CPU cores collectively (not 6 CPU cores).

[onderhold]

... agreed-upon number of processor cores ...

... 3 servers, with up to 2 physical CPU sockets in each, with up to 6 cores in each CPU. This means up to 36 CPU cores collectively...

.. but, regarding licensing costs, there's no use in multiplying sockets with cores.

We have 2 servers with 2 sockets each. One socket is empty, in each of the other three sockets there's an AMD 6000 Series 12 core CPU mounted.
This totals in 36 CPU cores.

Nevertheless, VEEAM Essentials gets offered to us as a so called "Server CAT Classifikation 2, Tier B" license, which is nearly double in price in comparison to an ordinary VEEAM Essentials license.

Owners of AMD 8 to 12 core CPUs beware, maybe you're better off buying a competing product that gets sold on a plain "true socket" basis, irrespective of core count.
(Or next time you plan a SMB server infrastructure, stick to Intel Hyperthreading CPUs in the first place).

[Gostev]

Tier B license, which is nearly double in price in comparison to an ordinary VEEAM Essentials license.

Small correction, Tier B license is only 50% more expensive, despite allowing for up to 100% more cores (and thus more VMs) per socket (6 > 12).

Also, I just wanted to point out that you cannot really run VMware Essentials on your hosts without braking VMware EULA around multi-core licensing, however Veeam Essentials can only be use with VMware Essentials hosts (as per Veeam EULA).

[vargispa]

please let me know what you mean by agreed-upon number of processor cores. If one my server has quardcore processors and if anothr server with Xeon hexacore processor, then how it will be considered. Or socket is a unit for certain no of cores, agreed between the customer and veeam and this may differ from customer to customer.

[Gostev]

No, this is not different from customer to customer. There are differing licensing tiers depending on number of cores per processor. Both 4 core and 6 core processors are Tier A license (regular price). If you had 8-12 cores processors, they would require Tier B license (increases the license price by 50%). Thanks.