V12 tape costs

[mark49808]

Did I see/hear correctly in the VeeamON session that in v12 files to tape jobs will no longer be "free"? And will have instance costs per 500GB of data? If so that effectively kills our use of the product. We back up Petabytes to tape from a few servers for archival purposes with a competitors product and just pay for a simple agent license per server.

We were considering moving everything to Veeam
but veeam is 1000x as expensive now.

A shame as I prefer the product. But it's not 1000x better at putting bits on a tape.

Hopefully I'm misunderstanding something but seemed pretty clear.

[Dima P.]

Hello mark49808,

With v12 file to tape job will start to consume one instance from the VUL license per 500GB of data, that is correct. All Veeam files created by other jobs will be excluded from calculation and wont consume license, say you are processing 500GB vbk file with file to tape it wont require/consume VUL instance.

Backup to tape jobs however will not be license based on consumption, no changes here, will work the same way as today in v11.

We back up Petabytes to tape from a few servers for archival purposes with a competitors product and just pay for a simple agent license per server.

Can you please clarify your scenario and what type of data you are planning to protect, so I can comment better? Thank you!

[mark49808]

Thanks for the reply Dima. Your session was very informative and all the v12 improvements look great, except this one.

Allow me to explain. We are in a regulated industry and thus need to preserve large amounts of data for a long time, but it is rarely actually retrieved (perfect use for tape). We currently process the data and put it on a staging server for backing up with Veeam.

We currently have a File to Tape backup job set up within V11. That file to tape back up job pulls data from a single server that has an agent installed and we send to WORM tape. We then generate a report of what files were backed up by looking through the Veeam database. We use that report to delete from the source, and continue on with the next batch. This is done as the cost to store on disk is significant, and writing to tapes we can send offsite to an archive location which is rarely read from.

So question is with this approach, do we have to pay for the total GB sent to tape? Or just the size of the source server "share" that we're backing up from? The two costs are very different as i'm constantly adding new data to the share, backing it up, and deleting it.

[Dima P.]

Thank you for your feedback! Just one question left: you mentioned that agent is installed on that machine. You take backup with the agent and then send resulting backup from disk or you backup with agent and file to tape at the same time via two separate jobs?

[mark49808]

Sorry, to be clear we just go straight from server to tape it seems? Does that make sense?

[Dima P.]

Sure, thanks! For direct backup to tape with v12 you have to license the content based on amount of data processed.

However there is a better way: if you can install agent or process such machine via VM backup job to take the image-level backup periodically to your disk repository, then you can send such backup to tape at no cost. With such setup you have to license only machine processing (so single vm or agent license is required). From the retention perspective you can store such backup at your disk repository short term, while backup on tape retention can be configured for a longer period of time.

[mark49808]

And does this give me a list of individual files in the database that i can query (and report on) and specifically restore? Otherwise i have to restore a whole image with many more files than i need. I think that was the limitation before.

[Dima P.]

Since we do have the file index in the backup job is there should be a way to get the list of the files out. Let me check.

[Dima P.]

mark49808,

1. It is possible to mount agent backup / vm backup during FLR
2. Once mounted you can list all the folders/files (say by executing ls the command line for VeeamFLR folder)
3. The output will display all files/folders in the mounted restore point

Will such workaround work for your case? Thank you!

[vmtech123]

So VBK and backup's to Tape are not effected? just about gave me a heart attack there.

[Dima P.]

vmtech123,

Yup. In v12 license will be required only for file to tape job, secondary jobs traditionally do not consume license (since your backup has already been licensed during primary backup), so backup to tape remains as it is today.

[mark49808]

Dima,
I'm looking into the use case to mount an agent backup and browse during FLR. I was not aware of this capability.

I see it as a workaround, but its certainly not ideal as it does require a fair amount of manual effort. Where with the File to Tape job i can just query the DB and its much easier / able to be automated.

I'll have to weigh the options here.

For File To Tape in v12, what is the consumption model? Is it total bytes written to tape that has yet to expire? Or is it Size or protected drive/folder? Ie if i backup a share that is 500GB in size to tape 10 times, do i pay 1 VUL, or 10? Basically I'm curious if it is based on the source volume size, or the unexpired bits on tape. If so that gets extremely expensive especially if protecting data on tape for a long duration.

If it is source volume size it is less of a concern, as my use case of tape as archival storage may be ok. Ie I have a 10TB share, and dump data into that, back it up to tape, delete it from disk, and dump more data. The 10TB share size never increases, but the data within is constantly new every few days. Its unclear how you meter this.

[Dima P.]

Hello mark49808,

its certainly not ideal as it does require a fair amount of manual effort. Where with the File to Tape job i can just query the DB and its much easier / able to be automated.

Was talking with PowerShell team, looks like it's possible to script the tracking of files in the backup during mount via Get-VBRWindowsGuestItem

For File To Tape in v12, what is the consumption model? Is it total bytes written to tape that has yet to expire? Or is it Size or protected drive/folder?

Size of the source data processed by the file to tape job i.e. if file to tape reads and puts 500GB to tape, the consumption will be 500 GB.

Ie if i backup a share that is 500GB in size to tape 10 times, do i pay 1 VUL, or 10? Basically I'm curious if it is based on the source volume size, or the unexpired bits on tape. If so that gets extremely expensive especially if protecting data on tape for a long duration

If you do that within single file to tape job the license will be consumed only once i.e. the total size of the share will be still 500 GB.

Ie I have a 10TB share, and dump data into that, back it up to tape, delete it from disk, and dump more data. The 10TB share size never increases, but the data within is constantly new every few days. Its unclear how you meter this.

We track the size for the file share as a root entity. The file share size is stored in Veeam B&R for 30 days, if share becomes bigger - new size will be licensed immediately. If file share gets smaller we will recalculate the license consumption in 30 days.

[mike979]

vmtech123,

Yup. In v12 license will be required only for file to tape job, secondary jobs traditionally do not consume license (since your backup has already been licensed during primary backup), so backup to tape remains as it is today.

Hold up, are you saying that in the v12 community edition, file to tape jobs will now cost based on size of data being backed up?

[Dima P.]

Mike,

In v12 community edition you still can run file to tape for free but it's going to be limited to 10 instances included in community edition.

[Gostev]

So just like "file to disk" jobs in v11 Community Edition.

[Moopere]

Since we do have the file index in the backup job is there should be a way to get the list of the files out. Let me check.

I've been down this road. Ultimately if you need to find a file stored on offline media, and you want to be directed to _which_ specific media, then Veeam doesn't seem able to do it.

Have a look at this:

post454116.html#p454116

In that thread I accept that Veeam loses track of individual files when a media is taken offline, so, tape and removable disks for example. You can use EM to find them, but it won't direct you to the media you need. EM finds a file on tape and will report its location simply as "TAPE"

It also appears to be quite a process to extract filenames and paths from existing backups. I must admit I balked at the complexity of doing this, though I suspect anyone able to write up an application in powershell might be successful - I'm a script kiddy in PS though so that was going to be quite a challenge for me.

[MCH_helferlein]

Wow.. what a change!

We have our SQL Dumps directly on an Exagrid Dedupe Appliance that acts in that case like a NAS.
We want to backup those Shares with Veeam NAS and VUL licensing.
I have already got an offer for this. I will need about 300 VUL licenses just to backup that NAS Share.

If we do now a File to Tape Job of that repository where that NAS backup already resides we need to license this with VUL licenses again or not?

Thanks for your reply.
Regards
Peter

[rciscon]

This is definitely a surprising turn of events.

We are currently using V11 "File to Tape" jobs only to backup the NFS volumes that contain our production VMware VMs on our NetApp storage. We only do these backups on a monthly basis, but they are obviously quite large. We are a longtime CPU Socket licensing customer and my guess is that we'd move to another product rather than move to VUL licensing.

I just received news that "File to Tape" backups are no longer supported under socket licensing, and if we want to use this feature to backup our NFS volumes we'll need to purchase VUL licenses---is this the case?

Are there any options under socket licensing that would allow us to backup our NetApp NFS volumes containing our VMs that will not incur additional licensing costs?

[Gostev]

File to Tape was not "under socket licensing" previously, rather it was a free functionality: because it was included in the Community Edition, it was automatically free in all paid editions too. Then newly introduced scalable File to Tape backup engine in V12 is no longer free and can be licensed either with VUL, or with a special capacity license (which for large amount of data is a few times cheaper than using VUL). And the existing File to Tape users are eligible for additional big discounts on top of that.

[MCH_helferlein]

Wow.. what a change!

We have our SQL Dumps directly on an Exagrid Dedupe Appliance that acts in that case like a NAS.
We want to backup those Shares with Veeam NAS and VUL licensing.
I have already got an offer for this. I will need about 300 VUL licenses just to backup that NAS Share.

If we do now a File to Tape Job of that repository where that NAS backup already resides we need to license this with VUL licenses again or not?

Thanks for your reply.
Regards
Peter

Dear Gostev.

can you please respond to this as well?
really appreciate it!

[Mildur]

Hi Peter

All Veeam backup files (VBR backup files, Agent backup files, VB365 backup files, NAS backup files, ...) won't count towards the File To Tape Job licensing. You licensed them already with the source job.

In case you didn't know, with V12 you could also use a Backup to Tape job for your NAS backups.

Best,
Fabian

[edunik]

Sorry guys but this tape costs are a ripoff to loyal customers.

We are a veeam customer since 2013 and extended our Support maintenance last year until 2026. Now after the upgrade to v12 we have to add 40 Instances because of the new licensing. The Files (round about 17TB) we are writing to tape are mainly SQL Dumps local on the BackupServer. We had no issues with this jobs since version 7 - so what do we need the "new engine" for?

also what are our options?
1. stick to v11 although we have support until 2026
2. pay for the 40 Instances

and the discount for existing customers is ridiculous - ye its about 25%, but we still have to pay ~20K for the 40 Instances if we merge it to the main support to 2026.

rgds

[Gostev]

and the discount for existing customers is ridiculous - ye its about 25%

This can't be right, you should double check with your Veeam sales rep as the discount for existing customers is significantly larger than that even for the following years, let alone for the first year. May be they are looking at some other discounts, as opposed to those specifically designed for existing File to Tape job users impacted by the V12 change.

[jperham]

I was also quoted a crazy cost even with the "discount." I'm in the same boat as edunik and have been pretty silent up until this point but to me this just feels like a money grab with little warning. Whether it was meant to be that way or not, that's what it feels like on the customer side of this. My management has not been happy about this sudden tens of thousands of dollar change and have urged me to look elsewhere for a product to handle our needs.

I get Veeam needs to make money and continue development but going from an included feature with v11 to being told that it's going to cost hundreds of dollars per TB per year of data being processed is outrageous.

[Gostev]

I'm really not sure how you get "a crazy cost" quoted to you when based on my knowledge and original agreements the license is supposed to be completely free this year for upgrading customers... since we realize no impacted customers had this planned in their 2023 budget. Please tell your sales person to verify what they are doing with their management and/or the Pricing team. May be they didn't get the memo.

[pfischer]

Hi everybody,
I also have an angry customer who is using file-to-tape to archive some of his data.
Distribution (ingram micro germany) sent us a quote with 13% rabate on list-price.
Don´t know how to legitimate this sudden change in licensing.
Whats this memo your are talking about? Who sent it to whom? How can I relate to it when talking to our distri?
Kind regards from germany.

[Gostev]

It was sent to all sales at Veeam, including inside sales who take care of resellers and distributors. Just ask your distributor to check with their Veeam rep on this.

[pufferdude]

Add me to the list of long-time(2009) Veeam users that have been blind-sided by this change. I have lots of responsibilities and can't keep up with every change in every product, so was shocked when I upgraded to v12 and now my File-to-Tape jobs say "The job currently protect xxxx GB of data and will start consuming xxx instances from your product license after the grace period." (and how ;ong is the stupid grace period??)

We're a 6-socket perpetual user and have had NO need or reason to switch to VUL. We were told a couple of years ago (apparently in jest) that we could keep/renew the perpetuals forever, we just couldn't buy more... which was fine, we'll never need more.

Now there's a bait and switch where Veeam will be SO expensive to back up our file server that we'll have to look for something else. Does anyone know something good and REASONABLE for backing up 80+ TB of files?

Using Veeam's online calculator it would cost me at least $20k/yr to back up 80TB, and we only pay like $3k now. That's just insane.

[LandA]

This change certainly devalues our investment in Veeam. Tieing instances to data like this is arbitrary and disappointing.

I would be curious to know if the next version of Veeam plans to change the term "Instance" to "Credit" and then apply the same 500GIG calculation to each VM further devaluing the investment we have made and increasing the revenue for Veeam?