12.1 community edition "personal use only"

[ENBS]

Hi, i haven't found a topic for this and hope this is the right spot for this. I've tried to upgrade my 12.0 to 12.1 and found a passage saying:

License details:

Community edition, 10 instances, limited functionality & personal use only .

What does "personal use only" mean? That i can't use it for third parties (service provider) which is stated below and is clear (i think this was always the case) or does it prohibit commercial use?

best regards,

Stefan

[Mildur]

Hi Stefan

You can use our community edition to protect your own production environment.
But you cannot use it to offer any services to a customer of yours. Some examples what you are not allowed to do with the community edition:
- Deploy a new backup server for a customer
- Protect customer data on customers server or customer server in your datacenter
- Troubleshooting any technical issue a customer may have on a community edition backup server
- Providing consulting services for a community edition backup server deployment
Chapter 4.0 in our EULA: https://www.veeam.com/eula.html

I recommend to check out our Veeam Data Platform Essentials offering. You will get access to some important features and guaranteed support:
- SureBackup Job --> Automated recovery testing. You want to be sure that you can restore when you need to.
- Object Storage / Cloud Connect --> Copy your backups offside to a object storage or cloud connect provider
- Guaranteed support cases --> Community edition only gets support on best effort. And technical issues must be solved through a support case. We won't be able to help you over a forum post.

Please also have a look at our feature comparison list:
https://www.veeam.com/veeam_data_platfo ... son_ds.pdf

Best,
Fabian

[Benjita]

Hi Stefan !

I'm not sure I understand well the Community Edition EULA Chapter 4.

I am a system admin for a very little company of 15 people, but I am freelance. I doubt they will ever hire an IT tech. They need a backup solution, they have one physical server (file server) and 3 VM. I thought I could use the Community edition since it's for 10 workloads max, until I see "Personal use only". That's why I landed here. In the EULA they say "Your own production environment and only by You" wich is kind of confusing since I doubt many physical persons would need such a backup system to save their desktop. I also doubt many IT people manage their own production environment too ^^ I mean, It is most of the time their company's environment.

The question is, I'd like to install Community edition on a third party's server, to backup their own data upon their own NAS. So the solution will be running entirely over their own infrastructure. No hardware of mine will be involved. So it is for THEM and only THEM, but they don't have any technical skills which means they couldn't perform the installation.

Besides, I won't bill them the operation specifically. I do the installation for "free" so they can have a good backup system, which is kind of my reponsability too.

Any thoughts ?

Bests.

[Gostev]

Hello, Bejamin.

The CE EULA does not allow you to deliver the following service to any companies:

I'd like to install Community edition on a third party's server

Whether or not you do this for free or charge them for this service makes no difference.

I hope this clarifies it for you.

Regards

[Regnor]

I would ask such clients to buy an Essentials license. For a lower 3 digit price, they not only get the full feature set but also support from Veeam. As a freelancer and especially if you work for free, support and maintenance on all customer systems is something you would definitely want them to have. In case of any issues you'll have someone in the background to takeover and prevent spending all your free time.

[Benjita]

Hi,

so when they say "personnal", it really means personal then ^^
I'm courious about who could install such a heavy solution just for personal means. It's more a demo version to try it out then, I guess.
Thanks for you replies.
It is for a tiny company more invested in art stuff than making money so I won't recommend them any paying solution. The Nas is a synology so I can synchronize files but since you have to leave an open (but locked though) Windows session on the server when you're using synology drive client, I find it lame.

Bests.

[Gostev]

For desktop protection, those "physical persons" you mentioned will not use VBR CE usually - but rather a Veeam Agent, which is very lightweight.

VBR CE is for when you have a multiple workloads to protect, like a small production environment with a few servers, desktops and file shares.
VBR is heavier specifically because it can protect many more workloads and at scale.

But in either case, EULA requires end user to manage all free Veeam products personally and only in their own environment.

[Benjita]

Ok so I understand it is allowed to install CE server in a company then. I find it weird because in my case, who could tell who really has installed the soft.
For a little company that can't afford an IT position, in the end they're just not allowed to use Community Edition since they don't have the skill.