Switch to Free, managed by agent, keep backup chains

[tonynray]

I have been using a trial evaluation license of Agent for Windows and have my backup jobs for 22 physical machines setup to be managed by the Backup Server. Everything works great - deployment, management, monitoring - however I don't believe we will be paying for the full license once the evaluation is complete. Before the evaluation ends, I am hoping to find out if it is possible to switch to the free version of Agent for Windows, have it managed by the agent (which I believe is the only option in the free version, free doesn't support managed by backup server right?) AND use the existing backup chains.

From what I can tell, when I remove the backup job from the console and attempt to add a new job from the agent, there is no option to map the backup job to the existing backup files. I'd really prefer not to have to start from scratch with an active full backup and start a new backup chain. Is this possible?

Thanks
Tony

[Dima P.]

Hello Tony.

It's not possible to run agents in managed by Veeam B&R mode in Free mode (mapping backup files would not work as well). However, you can keep the resulting backup file as Veeam B&R will support recovery from this backup file even without license file.

[tonynray]

That's what I wanted to confirm. I knew the agents couldn't be managed by B&R in free mode, I was just hoping there would be a way to map the backup files to continue the backup chains. Oh well, thanks!

[tonynray]

Oh, one more question. Is there a quick guide on switching from the evaluation to free version of Veeam Agent? Does the Agent need to be reinstalled on the physical machines since everything is currently handles on the B&R server?

[Dima P.]

Tony,

Agent must be reinstalled completely as standalone agent holds completely different bundle of components. Standalone agents should be installed manually only after managed agents were removed from client machines. Cheers!