Case: 03378953.I tried a new installation with 9.5 u3a an another upgrade. Now i get the grace period but the wrong license is already pushed to my B&R Server.
Unfortunately, the case is in German; so, we cannot make sense of it.
We'd appreciate if you shed some light on the issue experienced as well as on the steps you'd taken that led to it.
We've just checked the licensing management portal along with merge functionality (that was made available few hours ago) and everything seemed to work correctly.
On a licensing management portal you should see a big banner on the upper side on the screen with "Get new licenses" button. When you click it, the licensing portal will show your current licenses. There you can select licenses that you want to merge and proceed.
Had already done that part, and I'm seeing the 'Production Licenses (U4)' section under License Management. That's where I'm running into issues with actually merging licenses.
v.Eremin wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 2:49 pm
As the result of merge, you will have either 1 license that includes only instances or 1 license that includes both sockets and instances.
So what's the deal here, Veeam? I used to have a perpetual B&R License for 9.x and five agent licenses. Now, when I click "get new licenses" and go to the portal, it shows me a perpetual socket license file for B&R, and two separate 10-instance license files for my agent licenses. If I install either of the 10-instance license files, it converts my U4 server to some weird thing where it starts counting EVERY VM as one instance. If I install the perpetual license from the U4 portal, it says I have 6 instances and am using 7.5 of them because it is applying a 1.5x multiplier to my five agents?
This is unacceptable. You need to correct these licensing issues. We used to be able to back up our VMware infrastructure through Veeam connecting to our VCSA without issue as well as the agents on our physical boxes and VMs that have iSCSI volumes directly attached. Now it seems like I get to pick one or the other, and for some reason you are counting my five agents 1.5 times in what appears to be a blatant cash grab to get me to pay for more licensing. Correct these issues or we will be looking for alternative vendors for our backup needs.
ctg49 wrote:'You can merge product licenses that are current on maintenance only. Product edition, license administrator and license type must match, with exception for Veeam Agent licenses ordered prior Update 4.'
As far as I can tell, they are on maintenance currently (until JUN2019), product editions I guess match? Though it doesn't let me select any, so I wouldn't even have the opportunity to have a mismatch. License administrators are the same (again, no chance to have a mismatch), and the VEEAM agent licenses were indeed ordered prior to U4 so the license type shouldn't matter.
Looks unexpected, kindly, reach license support department for further assistance.
So what's the deal here, Veeam? I used to have a perpetual B&R License for 9.x and five agent licenses. Now, when I click "get new licenses" and go to the portal, it shows me a perpetual socket license file for B&R, and two separate 10-instance license files for my agent licenses. If I install either of the 10-instance license files, it converts my U4 server to some weird thing where it starts counting EVERY VM as one instance. If I install the perpetual license from the U4 portal, it says I have 6 instances and am using 7.5 of them because it is applying a 1.5x multiplier to my five agents?
Can you select there the perpetual license and instance license(s) and merge them. The combined license should be enough to protect both virtual and physical workloads.
Can you select there the perpetual license and instance license(s) and merge them. The combined license should be enough to protect both virtual and physical workloads.
No, because the U4 licensing portal is still broken. It says all of my licenses don't meet the merge terms, even though they're all current on support. If I could get the proper licenses I wouldn't be posting about it here.
v.Eremin wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 4:29 pm
Looks unexpected, kindly, reach license support department for further assistance.
I did, they got me sorted out. For anyone else: You have to be logged in as the account which is set as the license administrator, which is only one person, likely not one of your admins if you order things like we do. I didn't know that, as it doesn't really specify it anywhere (that I specifically saw), nor does the error message state 'hey dummy, you're not permitted to fiddle with these licenses' (hint feedback hint hint).
Called support, they changed the license admin to a group mailbox our systems team uses, and I was able to edit the licenses once logged into that account. Appears to work correctly now.
How do we get more than 1 person set as a License Administrator? What are we supposed to do if the only License Administrator goes on a 2-week vacation?
rb4 wrote:No, because the U4 licensing portal is still broken. It says all of my licenses don't meet the merge terms, even though they're all current on support. If I could get the proper licenses I wouldn't be posting about it here.
Kindly, check whether all of the following requirements are met:
- your account is license administrator
- product edition, license administrator and license type match on the selected licenses
If both requirements are met, and the issue still persists, kindly, reach sales support department.
Well, the portal is certainly not "broken", otherwise we would not be seeing hundreds of successful merges per hour. So it must be some legitimate issue, and the only thing I can think of is that you're trying to merge instances into the capped license (Veeam Essentials). This does require manual handling due to the limited nature of Veeam Essentials.
ctg49 wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 4:40 pm
I did, they got me sorted out. For anyone else: You have to be logged in as the account which is set as the license administrator, which is only one person, likely not one of your admins if you order things like we do. I didn't know that, as it doesn't really specify it anywhere (that I specifically saw), nor does the error message state 'hey dummy, you're not permitted to fiddle with these licenses' (hint feedback hint hint).
Called support, they changed the license admin to a group mailbox our systems team uses, and I was able to edit the licenses once logged into that account. Appears to work correctly now.
You've got to be f-ing kidding me... maybe having some sort of, you know, notification of this restriction would be a good idea instead of a vague message about not meeting the merge terms. Poor communication on Veeam's part.
omegagx wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 4:44 pm
How do we get more than 1 person set as a License Administrator? What are we supposed to do if the only License Administrator goes on a 2-week vacation?
Guess they expect you to use a shared mailbox for administrative accounts.
omegagx wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 4:44 pm
How do we get more than 1 person set as a License Administrator? What are we supposed to do if the only License Administrator goes on a 2-week vacation?
As stated by @rb4, we use a shared mailbox with creds in our password vault for that, now anyway.
Our internal policies prohibit us from sharing passwords for accounts, so we are out of luck on this unless Veeam allows multiple Licence Administrators. Would that be possible to do? Why can't all technical contacts be able to manage licenses?
ctg49 wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 4:57 pm
As stated by @rb4, we use a shared mailbox with creds in our password vault for that, now anyway.
omegagx wrote: ↑Jan 24, 2019 5:14 pm
Our internal policies prohibit us from sharing passwords for accounts, so we are out of luck on this unless Veeam allows multiple Licence Administrators. Would that be possible to do? Why can't all technical contacts be able to manage licenses?
Unknown. There was an option in the ticket creation system for licensing issues to add a temporary administrator, and the support rep on the phone said something to the effect of 'they're looking into it' (unknown how accurate that might have been), but at this time there doesn't appear to be a way to easily add a secondary administrator to an account.
An easier route would probably be to request an exception for the shared account rule, for a specific purpose-built account such as this one. License management/continuity planning should be easy to justify.
We've just checked the licensing management portal along with merge functionality (that was made available few hours ago) and everything seemed to work correctly.
On a licensing management portal you should see a big banner on the upper side on the screen with "Get new licenses" button. When you click it, the licensing portal will show your current licenses. There you can select licenses that you want to merge and proceed.
As the result of merge, you will have either 1 license that includes only instances or 1 license that includes both sockets and instances.
If you've done that and still experience the said issue, kindly, open a support ticket and provide its number here.
Thanks!
Case # 03377770 opened yesterday. No grace period all backups failing for last 24 hours. Merged Perpetual and Agents licenses today and still not applying correctly.
Case #03378219, similarly for me merged perpetual and agent licenses now having a problem when installing the license file : License key type is not supported at the moment.
@Digga, judging on the error it looks like in your case, some invalid license key was generated. AFAIK this is not a known issue at the moment, so I can't give you a quick solution - you will need to work with our support on that one.
Very sorry for the inconvenience... I wish I could help, but the licensing portal is outside of Veeam R&D responsibilities, and thus not in my span of control.
@Gostev, all good always appreciate your help, I think my problem is similar to others the error message appears when applying the merged license key file, it is recognized but just didn't seem to want to apply correctly.
I am now waiting for my license administrators to be changed since you announced the merge feature yesterday, as they were different for perpetual VMware and subscription agent license. Fingers crossed this is done by today and I can merge and install the new license.
Update for today. I've reviewed all outstanding and closed support cases:
1. Vast majority of "broken portal" type issues looks to be caused by trying to merge licenses using an account that is not a license administrator. Just to make sure my note on the previous page does not get lost, I wanted to repeat: per our web team, you CAN have multiple license administrators assigned, and it is typical for our customers to have more than one assigned.
2. We have a number of licensing cases which may appear to be cause by invalid license issued by the portal, but in reality is likely some bug in the product with the in-place upgrade, because the license is confirmed to be valid. This issue one is now with T3 for investigation, and seems like this is the only one to be concerned about at the moment. We will update once we know more, but if you have this issue - please remember that opening additional support cases always help (more data to work with).
After license administrators were adjusted, I was able to merge the licenses successfully. Thanks for keeping us posted here, this is indeed unlike anywhere else.
Gostev wrote: ↑Jan 25, 2019 4:43 pm
Update for today. I've reviewed all outstanding and closed support cases:
1. Vast majority of "broken portal" type issues looks to be caused by trying to merge licenses using an account that is not a license administrator.
If this is not supported, why does the licensing webpage allow you to do the merge then? Why isn't the merge link hidden or some message being displayed when you click on it, that you can't do the merge since you aren't the license admin?
I had a similar issue - but haven't updated to U4 yet. We bought an additional two sockets and I just assumed the new licence key supplied would replace the old 2 socket one. Turns out it didn't. Had a rummage around and found I possibly needed to "merge" the licences, but couldn't find how to do that. Opened a ticket and was sorted in 24hrs. I think what would be good with upgrade purchases is a note that the licence may need merging and instructions on how to do it? Would save time and support tickets
Gostev wrote: ↑Jan 25, 2019 4:43 pm
I wanted to repeat: per our web team, you CAN have multiple license administrators assigned, and it is typical for our customers to have more than one assigned.
We didn't know that either so we made sure that every customer has a dedicated Veeam account which is equal for every future order.
Until know we didn't have problems upgrading the licenses.
Do I have to merge the Veeam Availability Suite Subscription licenses together with the Veeam Agents licenses to get only one license file to use with U4?
If I should have to do this, this cuts off more than a year of license expiry date.
This is unacceptable since we did pay for three years subscription.
Or do I need to merge all Availability Suite Subsciptions together into one license file and all Veeam Agents Subsciption into one?
Yes, all license keys have to be merged into one file and the expiration date will set to the most recent (earliest) one from either of the contracts. To resolve this you can contact your sales rep to renew the contract with the earliest date of expiration (to match the date from another contract) or you can keep using this license key, and once it expires just install your previous license key that had a longer support expiration period.
