Why do i get failed backup (license exceeded) when backing up 8 VMs

[GTFbnelson]

Hi all,
Im using the community version and running into an issue. Can someone help me figure out why I get the error: "Error: Unable to process workload: license has been exceeded" even though i am only backing up 8 VMs?
I thought the community version will back up to 10 vms?

[Gostev]

Hello, you can see where your 10 licenses are allocated in the License Information dialog, and revoke it from objects you're no longer backing up. If everything looks correct there, then you may have to contact support for further investigation. Thanks!

[GTFbnelson]

Thanks Gostev, i was able to fix it with your instructions!

[Gostev]

No problems, glad I was able to help.

I wanted to clarify that this happens because Veeam licenses "per protected workload", where "protected" means having at least 1 restore point created in the past 31 days. So, after a certain machine stops being backed up, it will keep consuming the license for 31 days, after which it will be automatically released.

Usually, VMs are no longer backed up after they have been deleted. And we can't know if a VM was deleted on purpose, or by mistake. In cases when VM was deleted by mistake, and you perform its restore a few days after discovering that it's missing - you're basically realizing the main value of our product at this point. Which is why every VM keeps consuming the license for 31 days, while the restore is still likely to follow. However, in case of legitimate and permanent VM removal, we give you the ability to release its license immediately through the License Information dialog.

[riahc3]

Im getting the same error message and Im not even close to the license usage (which I thought in NFR was unlimited but...I see that it isnt)

How do I rescan for Veeam to see all the VMs in the jobs?

[foggy]

Hi John, have you looked at the license usage in the dialog mentioned by Anton above?

[Vitaliy S.]

John, NFR keys are not unlimited, so removing some backups from a repository will fix it.

[riahc3]

Hello

For the past few days, Ive been getting this error message:

Unable to process : license has been exceeded

From what I am seeing, some virtual machines are being counted twice instead of once.

Im not sure why this is happening or even how to fix it.

[wishr]

What do you see on the instances tab? Most likely you should free some instances since 20 of 20 are already in use.

[riahc3]

I see 1 free.

And in license usage some machines are duplicated (the name of the VM appears twice)

[wishr]

Hi John,

Your screenshot states there are no free instances (20 of 20 in use - see above).

A single free instance might not be enough to protect a machine by Veeam Agents, server edition - please check the conversion rates. However, you should be able to create a backup job containing a single virtual machine, especially since you have the Enterprise Plus license.

Speaking about duplication, I suppose those are different VMs (maybe they have been cloned), just with the same name. It's hard to say since we do not know all the information.

Thanks

[riahc3]

I count 18 there... There is something I personally do not understand.

[wishr]

As Gostev mentioned above, if a VM has a restore point on disk created within past 31 days but is not included in any backup job it will be treated as protected - probably this is the case. So you may want to correspond your backups on disk with the existing backup jobs to understand what backups can be deleted to free up some instances.

[riahc3]

I deleted all the licenses from all the instances and now the backup are working again

Its marking me 14 used out of 20 (No idea how it calculated that)

[wishr]

Sounds correct: you just revoked some instances from your backups stored on disk and created within the last 31 days for VMs that are currently being NOT added to ANY of the jobs on the screenshot. You had 18 objects added to the jobs. Most likely, these objects are not unique, that's why now they consume just 14 instances (14 unique machines) as they are backed up, assuming you have kept all the jobs shown on the screenshot. This is just a guess since we do not know all the details and can only assume based on what information we have. To be precise we need to have look at the environment and jobs configuration.

Thank you

[riahc3]

All the VMs are unique in the job. None is duplicated twice.

Not sure what is going on but...I guess Ill leave it at that (?)

[foggy]

Any chance not all of them were backed up since revocation?

[emoxam]

Well what is the main reason of "license has been exceeded" ? What should we count ?

[Mildur]

Hi Alexander

With Socket licenses, you have more sockets then licensed.
With Instance based licenses (VUL, Rental), you have exceeded your licenses workloads (Agent, VM, NAS, Cloud workload).

Please check your license information in your VBR console:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110

You can also check out our kb article about the license exceeded notification:
https://www.veeam.com/kb1470

Best,
Fabian