2-3 months ago we bought from new B&R Enterprise perpetual licences for 8 sockets (all 8 used) and 6 instances (0 used).
We now have an additional requirement to backup 2 physical Windows servers so we have gone to our supplier and been told that we can no longer buy additional licenses for perpetual and will need to upgrade the whole thing to subscription based licensing to be able to add 3 instances (2x1.5).
Is this correct? It doesn't feel right having just paid a lot of money for the perpetual licenses that we now need to shell out a not insubstantial sum for an extra 2 physical servers.
Veeam Agents have always been available via subscription license only, so there is no change in the licensing model. Since you're talking about instances, I bet you're using Veeam B&R 9.5 U4, right?
You can use built-in instances (6 free instances), it should be enough to cover those 2 physical Windows servers.
Please review the conversion table for additional information.
I'm still not sure how I use those instances as I have configured a backup job that requires the agent and its saying I'm not licensed? Does it not find the licence automatically?
It clearly does find the license, because you can see those gifted instances in the License Information dialog, as per your first post. So, I am not sure what are you doing wrong, or what error you're getting. Perhaps it would be best for you to investigate this with support, as there are no known issues with the gifted instances. Please post the support case ID in this topic for our reference. Thanks!
I admit that the answer was staring me right in the face and I didn't notice it. I hadn't ticked the Allow unlicensed agents to consume instances. The job is now running.
Thanks to support and to the eternal never flagging Gostev