Veeam B&R Enterprise and Solaris agent - licence issue?

[TheMightyJD]

Hi,

Been using Veeam 10, and more recently v11 for a number of years now to backup our VMware kit. Works like a charm. We were so impressed we used it to backup some physical Solaris boxes using the free instance licences that came with our socket licences for Enterprise, and this has worked using the v2.0 agent on Solaris for some time.

Fast forward to earlier this month when we patched our Veeam B&R to 11a. All seemed fine, until we noticed after a few days that the Solaris agent backups weren't running, however the two windows agents for our clustered file server were running just fine. No emails were received to say they were failing, they just didn't run.

Upgraded the v2.0 agent to v3.0 just in case it was a compatibility issue - installed, but upon telling it to resync with the VBR repository, it fails saying that we have Enterprise installed, but need Enterprise Plus. Raised a ticket with Veeam to query this (case ID 05243628), and was told that the Solaris agents need Enterprise Plus to run, a fact that I have not previously been aware of (and which the Veeam environment itself wasn't either, as it's been backing up for the last 2 years without issue).

Veeam sent me two links stating that v2.1 and v3.0 agents require enterprise plus licencing, which is correct and is stated in the release notes. However the v2.0 agent notes have no mention of Enterprise plus being required. I'm also not happy that installing a maintenance patch has now knocked out backups that were previously fine, and it looks like the only option is to spend yet more money with you in order to change licences.

What I would like to know is when did the requirement for enterprise plus for Solaris agents come about, and how was it publicised? Why do the releases notes for 11a make no mention of this? More to the point, why did the agents themselves not report a job failure in an email, instead of just sitting there doing nothing? Finally, why was this all working fine for the last 2 years and previously I've raised tickets for issues with the Solaris agents and at no point have been told that we needed Enterprise Plus?

Not happy Veeam....

[Gostev]

Hi,

I apologize for any inconvenience this caused. Indeed, VUL/ENT+ capability level was always the requirement for Solaris and AIX agents. This was also reflected in the product edition comparisons at the time when we still offered different editions. If you say it worked with ENT before then perhaps there was a bug with license enforcement that was later fixed. We don't list each and every bug fixed in our updates because there are literally thousands of them.

I recommend that in future you always refer to the specialized licensing documentation prior to starting to use any new software in production. Just to be on the safe side as products may not always tell you cannot do what you're doing from the licensing perspective. Otherwise, you may end up in much bigger trouble with certain other vendors... I had a related experience personally and it was not pretty.

Please note that Release Notes is a technical document created by R&D and it is not meant to describe licensing in the first place, as we have the Licensing Policy for this. I personally create Release Notes for Veeam Backup & Replication product and I don't think I ever included any feature licensing information, as from my perspective it simply does not belong there. I'm actually surprised that agent release notes have this information, but I can see how it may come useful in case of agents.

In any case, going forward we already solved these kind of issue once and for all, since starting last year we're only selling the single fully functional product edition.

And in your case, I do recommend you get a quote for migrating your Socket licenses to VUL, which will enable you to continue backing up your Solaris servers.

Thanks!

[TheMightyJD]

Hi Gostev,

Thanks for your reply. The bit that irks me is I have raised a few cases over the years with Veeam relating to these agents (which are using the "free" instance licences that came with our socket licences) and at no point has anyone commented on us using Enterprise instead of Enterprise Plus. I was also less than happy that they failed silently after putting on 11a - at least if you try to backup a host with no licence you get an email telling you that it failed due to no licence, with the agent it simply didn't run or notify us. Why would you have a different requirement for an agent that is part of Veeam B&R when Windows agents work fine with Enterprise, or do I have to get ready for that to stop working as well?

A suggestion has been made to buy a VUL pack for just the Solaris agents and merge this with the socket licence - however, I'm not sure this will work due to this nugget I found:-

Important note: When merging per-socket and VUL licenses, be aware that the socket license “edition” dictates the capability of the entire merged environment. For example: If you merge Veeam Backup & Replication Enterprise edition sockets with Veeam Backup & Replication VUL (with full features), the environment will be set to the Enterprise edition feature set. In order to get full Enterprise Plus edition capabilities, users need to either a) migrate per-socket licenses to VUL licenses or b) upgrade per-socket licenses to the Enterprise Plus Edition.

So, if we bought a VUL pack for the Solaris agent licences, it would effectively be brought down to the level of our socket licences which are Enterprise, and therefore wouldn't work as the requirement of Enterprise Plus would not be met. Can you confirm this would be the case?

Thanks!

[Gostev]

That is correct, Enterprise Plus is the requirement for Solaris/AIX agents. This is why I recommended migrating your Socket licenses to VUL, rather than just buying VUL.

Migration policy is built in a way to ensure your renewal costs remain more or less the same with Veeam, which is achieved by providing you with a discount in perpetuity for all migrated licenses, so it should not change your yearly Veeam costs significantly. Also, you won't need to buy extra VUL to cover a few of your Solaris servers because VUL consumption can be exceeded by 10 or 10% of licensed number of instances (whichever number is greater).

Thanks!