Licensing - FileShares

[GianlucaCroci]

Hello,
I don't understand how the licensing part of FileBackup jobs of shares works.

What I know, 1 license should be calculated for every 500 GB of saved data.

In my case I've 4 jobs of this type.

• 1. save 3 NFS Shares. The first one in the save takes up less than 500 GB and this is not calculated. The second one takes up 2.35 TB, and is calculated as 1 license. The third one takes up 1.37 TB, and is calculated as 2 licenses.
  2. save 1 SMB share. the save takes up 3 TB and 4 licenses are calculated
  3. save 1 SMB share. the save takes up 3.65 TB and 10 licenses are calculated
  4. save 1 SMB share. the save takes up 2.66 TB and 7 licenses are calculated

if I had to calculate, and I do it by default (so if 1.3 TB I only calculate 2 licenses), the licenses used should be
1. 6 licenses (instead 3 are calculated)
2. 6 licenses (instead 4 are calculated)
3. 7 licenses (instead 10 are calculated)
4. 5 licenses (instead 7 are calculated)

At the end the number of licenses corresponds, but the distribution per job does NOT.
This makes the calculation for any new jobs of the same type very difficult.


Does the license calculation only occur on the first backup, or does it also take into account any copy that is made on another site (with a CopyJob)?



I also read that in version 12.2 the File to tape part has been changed (regarding licenses)
- they have been re-engineered for scalability and are no longer free with Veeam B&R 12.2 . You will have a grace period of 3 months following the upgrade to Veeam B&R 12.2, during which your existing jobs will not consume license.
After this?

Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards

[david.domask]

Hi Gianluca,

First, can I ask how are you checking the consumption? It should just show in the Veeam Console under Menu > License (See here in the User Guide) and it will give you a more clear idea on the consumption per share.

The licensing is calculated during every run of the unstructured data backup job or unstructured data backup to tape job -- since it's the source share that is calculated, it might make more sense to review it that way using the first link I mentioned; keep in mind that as noted on 2nd link I provided, adding the same share to multiple primary jobs will result in additional instance consumption -- Backup Copies of Unstructured Data Backup (as well as Unstructured Data Backup to Tape) do not consume additional licenses; for Unstructured Data Backup to tape, please note that this is different than doing direct File to Tape in that by adding an Unstructured Data Backup to a Backup to Tape job, the Tape job will read from the existing Unstructured Data backup instead of from production.

I would say focus on the instance consumption from the shares and check the examples I listed in the 2nd link -- it should help to clarify the situation a bit more.

[GianlucaCroci]

Thanks a lot.

In fact, the information on how many licenses we're consuming with this type of backup was taken from there (Menu -> "License"). I then looked under "Backups" -> "Disk" to see the disk usage of the various backups.


Thanks for the link "Instance Consumption for Object Storage Backup, File Backup and File to Tape Jobs", and especially for the Cases at the end that explain very well.


I've to add something, which is probably important.
Every end of the month we save these FileBackup to Tape.
A few months ago I had several slowness problems in doing so, and so I changed strategy. I use 4 normal FileBackups for daily saves, and other 4 FileBackups that are performed only at the end of the month, which are then put on tape.
The 4 "old" FileBackups and the 4 "FileBackups for Tape" point to the same Shares, only that putting the data on Tape is easier because it involves processing a single FULL save (after putting the data on Tape, I delete the backup from "Backups" -> "Disk").


For the File to tape part of 12.2, how will dismissal work?


Thanks again.
Regards

[david.domask]

You are very welcome Gianluca! I agree, the examples from our Technical Writers are great and I'm glad they included them.

For your remaining question, just to confirm, do I get it right you have backups of File Shares (Unstructured Data backup) that go to disk, and then periodically, you do File Share to tape?

So your schema looks like:

Daily: File Share backup => Disk
Monthly: File Share Backup direct to Tape

??

Or are you adding the Daily backups as a source for a Backup to Tape job like I advised above?

The reason I'm pushing adding the Unstructured Data backups to Backup to tape jobs is that such copy operations do not require licenses:

Unstructured data sources processed with backup copy and backup to tape jobs are not regarded as protected data sources and do not consume the license capacity. These types of jobs provide an additional protection level for unstructured data sources that are already protected with backup jobs.

So just in general, the "best" way for getting your Unstructured Data backup to tape is

Production => Backup to Disk => Backup disk based backups to tape

The backup to tape job will read data from the backup itself and store the files in their native condition on tape, and restores from tape will work as you expect file to tape restores to work.

I'm not sure I quite got your question, but let me know if I can clarify further.

[GianlucaCroci]

Thanks.
Now I think I understand.
Before I thought that 1 License every 500 GB was referred to the saving and not to how much I'm going to save (example I save 1.1 TB in a backup of 800 GB, so I thought 1 license and instead there are 2, because they're referring to 1.1TB and not 800GB).
Now everything is clearer to me.

Also if I understood correctly I could have 50 different folders of 490 GB in a job, and not pay for a license. correct?
see https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120 case 6 and 7


I just have to understand what is meant in what "you" wrote in the news of 12.2

Code: Select all

I also read that in version 12.2 the File to tape part has been changed (regarding licenses)
- they have been re-engineered for scalability and are no longer free with Veeam B&R 12.2 . You will have a grace period of 3 months following the upgrade to Veeam B&R 12.2, during which your existing jobs will not consume license.
After this?

Thanks a lot for your reply

[david.domask]

Hi Gianluca,

You're very welcome for the advice and I'm glad it's making more sense for you. Indeed, if the total size of the share is < 500 GiB, then it's rounded down and ignored until it exceeds 500 GiB.

As for the File to Tape part, it's been what we're discussing above -- previously a File to Tape job did not require the workload to be licensed -- since v12, the File to Tape engine was improved significantly as noted, and now going directly from production to tape with File to Tape is a licensed workload.

So If you go:

File Share => File to Tape job => Tape == Requires Instances as per the links I shared earlier

If you go:

File Share => Unstructured Data Backup to Disk => Backup to Tape job which => Tape:

Unstructured Data backup to Disk == Requires instances
Backup to Tape job => No instances required for the Backup to Tape job

Is it more clear?

[GianlucaCroci]

Thanks a lot.

yes, more clear now.

I have to pay a license if I backup to tape directly from the source (Filebackup to Tape), while if I pass from a FileBackup job, or a copy of it via CopyJob, I do not need additional licenses other than those already used for the FileBackup.

Thanks again.
Regards
Gianluca