V12 tape costs

[Gostev]

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?

I have always been the biggest opponent of Capacity-based licensing there is. Unfortunately however, specifically for unstructured data there's simply no other meaningful way to license protection. I'm not sure why you think what we do is "arbitrary" and what other parameter you feel would be more fair to license based on. I personally can't think of anything that would be fair to both our customers (license cost of protecting small vs. big NAS deployment should be proportionally different) and to Veeam (as our support costs are proportional to the protected data size).

[pufferdude]

There does seem to be a disconnect at Veeam where they think "big companies" have "lots of data" and thus "can be charged more", but there are very small orgs (like ours) that only need 6 sockets to back up their entire virtual infrastructure, but then ALSO have a NAS that's nearly 100% media (4k video) that is nearly 80TB and constantly growing. Throwing $20k/yr price tags at such a workload *for a business of our size* is just not realistic, especially when a feature that was "free" is suddenly not.

[andy999]

I have always been the biggest opponent of Capacity-based licensing there is. Unfortunately however, specifically for unstructured data there's simply no other meaningful way to license protection. I'm not sure why you think what we do is "arbitrary" and what other parameter you feel would be more fair to license based on. I personally can't think of anything that would be fair to both our customers (license cost of protecting small vs. big NAS deployment should be proportionally different) and to Veeam (as our support costs are proportional to the protected data size).

Add my company to the list of those looking at other products now, and I'm sure there are many more who don't visit the forums or complain to their account rep. To have a feature provided for years and then suddenly charge is not a good look. Yes Veeam is a for profit company, and as an Executive I expect you to defend their choice, but this comes across as greed. I saw in another thread where you said something like larger companies requested features that required a new tape engine. If that was the case and you felt it required additional licensing that should have been made a new product, and kept the old engine in VBR for everyone else that purchased this product with this feature included and has been working fine up to now.

[Gostev]

There does seem to be a disconnect at Veeam where they think "big companies" have "lots of data" and thus "can be charged more", but there are very small orgs (like ours) that only need 6 sockets to back up their entire virtual infrastructure, but then ALSO have a NAS that's nearly 100% media (4k video) that is nearly 80TB and constantly growing. Throwing $20k/yr price tags at such a workload *for a business of our size* is just not realistic, especially when a feature that was "free" is suddenly not.

Small orgs can protect NAS for just $100/TB with Veeam Essentials. The problem is that there is a 50TB limit with Veeam Essentials because it is designed for small customers. Perhaps this is something you could solve with your sales rep as the 50TB is not something the product enforces, but is how licenses are cut.

kept the old engine in VBR for everyone else that purchased this product with this feature included and has been working fine up to now.

Actually I've already answered this exact suggestion in that other thread, in short this approach is too costly from R&D perspective (plus consider we're talking about something to be given away for free).

[andy999]

The only thing that can be considered given away for free is the community version, and I don't think anyone cares if you put limits on a free product. Everyone else though pays thousands annually, some tens of thousands annually, for a product that had file to tape as an included feature set. Now you're changing it to require a separate license and want small orgs to pay "just" another $5000 for 50TB?

If you want to charge more for a feature that was previously included in the core cost the right thing to do would have been to grandfather existing users like you did with socket licensing.

[Gostev]

Considering that average "small orgs" are currently paying $5000 to protect 12.5TB worth of production data residing in VMs (50VMs x 250GB, above-industry-average VM size), I would say $5000 to protect 50TB of production data residing on NAS is a pretty damn good deal, as it is exactly 4x cheaper for the same amount of data. However, pricing is not the right topic to discuss on R&D forums as it is not in the realm of R&D responsibilities.

As for the rest - you're making some invalid assumptions there, however being the one person behind all these features I'm happy to share the actual story. The feature that was "included in the core cost" was designed for copying backups to tape with the Free and Standard editions (more expensive editions have fully integrated tape export). Thus its original scale limitation, as the engine was designed to process a relatively low number of very large backup files. Now, because a license is already required to produce said backup files, the feature was provided at no additional costs as to not to double-dip and charge our users twice for backing up the same data.

A relatively small number of customers decided to use this feature for something it was never envisioned or designed for: protecting large amount of production data without paying Veeam a penny for this particular workload. For example, the engine appeared to be good enough for video files, which are similar in their large size and low quantity to image-level backup files. So, consider this a loophole that is now closed: the protection of any production workload must be licensed, and those important files from your production NAS are no exception.

And we did in fact "grandfather existing users like we did with socket licensing" by introducing 100% discount for the users impacted by this transition.

[edh]

There does seem to be a disconnect at Veeam where they think "big companies" have "lots of data" and thus "can be charged more", but there are very small orgs (like ours) that only need 6 sockets to back up their entire virtual infrastructure, but then ALSO have a NAS that's nearly 100% media (4k video) that is nearly 80TB and constantly growing. Throwing $20k/yr price tags at such a workload *for a business of our size* is just not realistic, especially when a feature that was "free" is suddenly not.

Easy to solve, instead use storage as NAS (NFS/SMB), use storage apliance as SAN and present several LUNs (iSCSI or FCoE) to a Linux/Windows server and you will not get extra charged.

[andy999]

And we did in fact "grandfather existing users like we did with socket licensing" by introducing 100% discount for the users impacted by this transition.

I don't think that has been communicated very well with sales. Otherwise this wouldn't be such a hot topic for many of us.

[andy999]

Easy to solve, instead use storage as NAS (NFS/SMB), use storage apliance as SAN and present several LUNs (iSCSI or FCoE) to a Linux/Windows server and you will not get extra charged.

Is this true? Because that is what I do and we still get the prompt for licensing. I have a VM file server covered under socket licensing. The storage appliance is presented to the VM as a LUN via iSCSI. I could do a backup and then backup to tape for no extra charge. However if I have a file to tape job, referencing the licensed VM and drive letter, it prompts for more licensing. That is the main problem I have. The workload is covered for backup, and then backup to tape, but not for file to tape. All I want to do is backup my licensed server to tape without having to store it on the backup repository first.

[LandA]

I have always been the biggest opponent of Capacity-based licensing there is. Unfortunately however, specifically for unstructured data there's simply no other meaningful way to license protection. I'm not sure why you think what we do is "arbitrary" and what other parameter you feel would be more fair to license based on. I personally can't think of anything that would be fair to both our customers (license cost of protecting small vs. big NAS deployment should be proportionally different) and to Veeam (as our support costs are proportional to the protected data size).

This reinforces my point. If I target one device for backup it should use one instance regardless of size. What I am reading here is the thought process is starting to lean toward more capacity-based backups and my larger VMs will require more licensing in the future. 500GIG is certainly an arbitrary number, 1TB could have been just as easily selected as a threshold.

[Gostev]

If I target one device for backup it should use one instance regardless of size.

Then we would be charging a pizza shop backing up their 1TB QNAP the same as a large enterprise backing up their 10PB Isilon. Don't know about you but this does not seem fair to me.

500GIG is certainly an arbitrary number

500GB is definitely NOT an arbitrary number. Here's how we arrived to it:

1. In V10, NAS backup was launched at 250GB per VUL. This was set to provide the lowest cost for NAS backup across all of our enterprise backup competitors - but we knew we will likely need to tweak it down the road based on the actual adoption and feedback. And oh boy, we received lots of feedback there's a big thread from a few years ago still on the NAS forum.

2. Over the next year, we've monitored discounts our sales had to give when selling this functionality and it came down to 44% average discount across all deals.

3. So in V11, we doubled 250GB to 500GB as to bring the MSRP close to what most customers were actually willing to pay for this functionality.

[LandA]

I feel like we are agreeing on the fundamentals here.

You keep explaining that two customers with vastly different data sets should be charged different rates. This is a completely reasonable method of sizing a service. Up until v12 1 instance was not tied to a data limit. Veeam is clearly looking at things differently now and I estimate that this will continue working its way into other aspects of the product. It is a shrewd business move and will generate more revenue for the company. Explaining the difference between 1TB of data and 10PT of data is exactly what I am saying. I have a number of VMs that exceed 500 GB storage and I fully expect Veem to come after those next in order to further monetize backup capacity over instances.

When I say arbitrary I don't mean it was picked with a random number generator, I mean that a number had to be picked and that that number could just as easily be any other number. I am sure that the number picked is more about judging what the market could bear vs some specific technical limit that required the number to be pegged at 500gigs. Again before v12, there were no data quotas tied to my licencing cost.

The reality is there are a number of customers here who, by virtue of staying current within the terms of their licencing agreements, found that the move from v11 to v12 now has less capacity to do the backups they were doing the before the upgrade. Some of us have shared our displeasure with this change and the response here has been largely we should not have been using the product this way because that is what was not intended and this is a corrective action for our unsanctioned use of the feature.

Just to be clear... Veeam is fully entitled to charge users whatever they want and can formulate their licencing structure as they see fit. Free market economy and all. The calculation will be how much can Veeam increase the cost of ownership to maximize profits before customers feel enough pain and they start to leave for alternatives. What cant be expected is that all customers will be happy with such changes.

[david.domask]

Is this true? Because that is what I do and we still get the prompt for licensing. I have a VM file server covered under socket licensing. The storage appliance is presented to the VM as a LUN via iSCSI. I could do a backup and then backup to tape for no extra charge. However if I have a file to tape job, referencing the licensed VM and drive letter, it prompts for more licensing. That is the main problem I have. The workload is covered for backup, and then backup to tape, but not for file to tape. All I want to do is backup my licensed server to tape without having to store it on the backup repository first.

Tangential to the main discussion, but I think the GP meant that you present the LUN via iscsi and do an Agent based backup (VAW or VAL), and then use Backup to Tape to move the Agent backup to tape.

This works as prescribed, but there are some limits (no File Level Restore directly from backup files on tape, it needs to be staged to a repository first for granular restores). But if just having a tape archive of the shares for the "very occasional" restore/emergency restores (aka, everything's gone except tape), then it's a fine approach that many use.

[anicolai]

I represent yet another disappointed customer.

We fear that this is an ongoing journey where Veeam will move away for "licence what you protect" to "license the amount of data you protect" in general. We wouldn't be suprised if other backup features were to transform to capacity based licenses also.

We have a SMB3 based Windows Cluster protected with two Veeam Instances. We have choosen File 2 Tape due to these three reasons: Large Amount of Date. Requirement that backup is kept offline/offsite samt backup medium must guarantee 30 years durability. Veeam helped os design the soultion i 2021 and happilly acceptede our investment in licenses and prepaid support until spring 2025.

Disappointed is big that Veeam does this license change. We thought we prepaid both the right to use the features and the right to do version upgrades.
We have had discussions with Veeam about this. We have been offered a very large discount for the first 12 months but onwards there will be no discounts dispite the prepaid support until 2025. This will mean a severe change in license/support costs since we protect almaost 500TB of data this way. We have already made decission that we are forced to stay at Veeam version 11 as long as possible and then look for a replacement product and terminate a long Veeam relationship.

[Gostev]

We fear that this is an ongoing journey where Veeam will move away for "licence what you protect" to "license the amount of data you protect" in general. We wouldn't be suprised if other backup features were to transform to capacity based licenses also.

No plans for this at the time for sure. We have some requests for such licensing model from enterprise clients, but even if add it as an option (not currently planned) it wouldn't be the primary licensing model but something to be used for ELAs (Enterprise Licensing Agreement). That's the current view.

[pufferdude]

And we did in fact "grandfather existing users like we did with socket licensing" by introducing 100% discount for the users impacted by this transition.

This appears not to be true. I just (finally) got a number from my Veeam rep and he gave me MSRP ($235/TB for no Veeam One monitoring) which would be $17,625 for our current (but growing constantly) 75TB of NAS data. That's a 5.8x increase over the approx $3k/yr we pay for Veeam B&R, and just not realistic.

I don't know where this "100% discount for users impacted by this transition" idea came from, but my rep knowns absolutely nothing about it.

[Gostev]

Tell your rep to read March announcements in the All Veeam chatter group.

[andy999]

For those having issues with their sales rep this is what mine sent me.

I will need a copy of your log files to document the size of the File to Tape capacity currently being used. I also need you to throw in a support ticket under license management.

- Orders will then create a free contract for you so no purchase necessary and will cover you for 12 months
- Once received you will need to merge your license files in the portal and install the new key
- File to tape consumes the per TB capacity given in the free contract and the license consumption message will go away.

He said they can only do 12 months so it's not really a grandfather unless that March announcement says different.

Also after submitting my ticket with the logs I got a reply back saying the Orders Processing team cannot generate licenses for anything less than 125TB at this time. My file to tape is only 31TB so my request got put on hold until they can issue smaller licenses. Hopefully it is before my grace period expires.

[pufferdude]

I am putting this here for future searchers (mostly) and (partly) to vent... so, after almost a month of dealing with my rep and Veeam licensing support, I FINALLY got a 1yr license for 75TB of tape backup! That's great, because it gives us time to look for an alternate way to back up this data since Veeam is no longer affordable for this.

That said... we ONLY got this license by proving (via a screen shot) the warning that Veeam B&R shows when you're in the grace period (because you don't have any NAS licenses)... which for us almost a month ago was 74.8TB. So the license they issued was for exactly 75TB. Problem is (and they don't seem to grock this at Veeam), backup data doesn't stay stagnant and is constantly growing. In our case it's not linear (a constant rate) but grows in fits and spurts as new video projects are archived to the NAS.

Well, it so happens that we're now at *78* TB since we sent Veeam that screen shot, and when I inquired if a license could be generated to cover what we EXPECT to be backing up over the next 12mo (90-100TB or so), I was told:

"the 1 year of NAS backup will cover the existing File to Tape backup TBs existing at the time of the error code. In the event you will need more TBs to be covered, we will have to license those additional Tb’s business as usual. "

So this is the way Veeam has chosen to go. Bend the customer over at any opportunity. Don't get me wrong, I'm "grateful" for the 75TB license we were finally able to obtain, but the stance they've taken is just crazy. It truly saddens me to have to look for another product because they decided to go down this insane pricing scheme path. NAS backup should be in the $50/TB range if they need to charge for it, NOT $235/TB.

[Gostev]

NAS backup should be in the $50/TB range if they need to charge for it, NOT $235/TB.

You should provide this feedback to your sales rep. At it may prompt them to reconsider the pricing, if there's much similar feedback. The current free 1 yr license is considered to be a stop gap to give them a chance to see if the current price is right, or if it needs tweaking.

I would only note that at the time when we first shipped NAS backup in early 2020, none of our enterprise backup competitors provided NAS backup for less than $500/TB, with the majority being in a few thousands per TB range. And that we had good feedback from our reseller partners (including on these very forums) upon the introduction of $100/TB pricing scheme for our SMB offering aka Veeam Essentials.

[pufferdude]

I just don't see how it's justified to make the price to back up the data more than the storage it's stored on (especially 5x the cost)... "the other guys are more expensive" isn't a valid argument since you allowed such backups to be free for so many years. And deciding to charge for it is Veeam's right, not arguing that.

It's the price POINT (from $0 to completely un-obtainable) for a small business that just happens to have a lot of media files to back up that's the problem. Those in the ivory tower fiddling with their spreadsheets at Veeam clearly equate large TBs of data with "Large companies with lots of cash", but we're an edge case that doesn't fit this model, and feel like we've been thoroughly screwed.

[Gostev]

you allowed such backups to be free for so many years

Just a small note: this I addressed in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of this post.

[lostNfound]

...snip...
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??)
...snip...

As I backedup via file2tape one 10 TB file I got confronted with the same warning that it will cost 20 Licences for this one file. So sorry if I missed the answer but I would be very interested to know how long the grace period will be?

[Gostev]

The in-product grace period is 3 months since you upgrade to V12. And then you can get a free license for a year more. And hopefully before that expires, our sales will have received enough feedback from customers to consider some File to Tape licensing changes.

[houdem]

We are currently evaluating other products as an alternative just because of this.

Soon they will charge you on how much your data occupies the space on your disks, nonsense imho.

[Gostev]

While we have no current plans for introducing such licensing, why do you think this is non-sense? Both "Frontend Capacity" and "Backend Capacity" are actually quite popular backup licensing methods. For example, backup appliances are effectively licensed based on backend capacity: when you run out of disk space on the backup appliance, you buy another appliance to get more space for your backups. Likewise, many enterprise backup vendors offer licensing that is based on the source (protected) data size. So, paying for backup product based on "how much your data occupies the space on your disks" is actually not uncommon at all.

[lostNfound]

It might be correct that some things are common. More important to me is the question why should people pay for a functionality without an added value? File-to-tape in a basic-edition means bringing data from the left side to the right side without change, you simply have some value in administration. This functionality should be free. If some clients need more functionality, let them pay for it, no doubt but the rudamentary function should remain free.

What makes Veeam really strong is the added value in backup-strategies like forever-incremental, reverse incremental etc., combined with the intelligence of local computing to save network performance. This way Veeam fulfilles the most important demands a backup software should deliver as it saves time and saves diskspace. Veeam, I love you for that.

Forcing the customer to do everything twice like first backup to disk, then backup to tape does not save time and either diskspace. Veeam, is it still you?

[Gostev]

I'm not sure I understand your last sentence. While D2D2T (Disk to Disk to Tape) is arguably the most common enterprise backup approach that allows meeting the 3-2-1 rule in the cheapest and most reliable way possible, Veeam certainly does not "force" you into doing this. With Veeam you can backup to disk only, or backup direct to tape only, if so you desire. This would be against best practices (the 3-2-1 rule) but it's totally available if this is something you want to do.

[houdem]

Correct me if I am wrong but Veeam doesn`t allow you to backup direct to tape only as you said. You have to select the source from a backup job and/or a backup repository.

[Gostev]

You're thinking Backup to Tape job but Veeam also has File to Tape jobs that allow for backing up files directly to tape. See the two options on this screenshot.