Veeam Agent Free vs VUL

[Anguel]

Hi!

Just wanted to have confirmed that Veeam Agent FREE for Windows will consume VUL licenses.
Background: We are a small business with multiple physical PCs and a few VMs and thought about switching to VUL subscription, but if Veeam Agent Free counts against VUL we will have to stay with socket based licensing.

Thanks in advance,

Anguel

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Anguel,

Veeam Agent Free edition is free and will be free after switch.
It CAN work with VUL(aka stop being Free and become paid Workstation\Server edition), but will NOT consume your VUL license instances by default, unless you WANT it to.

There is nothing that might hold you back with socket based license, unless you are referring to "gifted" instances we provide with sockets for free. Those are not Veeam Agent FREE Edition, but rather full functioning instances that could be used for Veeam Agent Workstation\Server edition use. In that case yes, switching to VUL will remove those gifted instances. "Gifted(for free!)" not equals "Free Edition"

Thanks!

[Anguel]

Thanks but how about backing up with Agent Free to a Veeam Repository? Do I really need no licenses for the Veeam Agent Free clients?

[Egor Yakovlev]

No additional licenses are needed, there is no difference if you have socket based license or VUL in VBR server - Veeam Agent Free Edition can use VBR Repositories as a target no matter what.
Thanks!

[Anguel]

I was not very sure because of these posts:

post319158.html#p318116

post319158.html#p319158

I already received a wrong answer there that was then corrected by Anton Gostev. Therefore, I wanted to double check.

[Egor Yakovlev]

That is correct and inline with Gostev's commends in linked threads - note that they are all about Community Edition(which is free, limited to 10 instances edition).
In your case, you will have a paid VBR server, which can be served as a repository for an unlimited amount of unmanaged Veeam Agents Free Edition installations.

[DGrinev]

Also, keep in mind, free agents cannot be mixed with paid agents while targeting the same VBR.

Thanks!

[Anguel]

Aha, there we go... Where is this documented?

[DGrinev]

You can read a comprehensive answer by Gostev here.

Thanks!

[Anguel]

Thanks, it looks like this is a serious drawback that automatically prevents us from making the switch from socket based. All posters in the thread you pointed me too also come to the same conclusion. In order to protect a few physical servers and a few workstations we would have to give up protecting about 20 PCs that now use Agent Free. Looks like we will have to stay with socket based.

Using community edition for the free Agents also does not seem to be an option because these seem to always consume instances there, according to other threads.

[DGrinev]

Anyway, using a socket-based license doesn't provide you an ability to mix free and paid agents.
You can solve this by using standalone Agents targeting a shared folder, in case you don't want to store PC backups locally.

Thanks!

[YouGotServered]

For some reason, I feel like I remember hearing that VBR will support holding multiple licenses and you can assign licenses on a per agent basis. Is that the case or am I mis-remembering? If that's the case, will we be able to install a free and paid license and assign accordingly?

Thanks!

[Vitaliy S.]

VBR will be able to hold multiple licenses (socket-based and VUL). I guess this is what you're referring to, right? Mixing free and paid agents logic didn't change in v10. Hope this helps!

[YouGotServered]

So this is a V10 feature? And what you're saying is that we can mix license types, but not editions? So could I have a mix of free, workstation, and server, or just a mix of workstation / server, or no mix at all, it has to be one or the other?

Sorry if my phrasing is confusing.

[DGrinev]

You still cannot mix free with paid Agents, this didn't change, but you can have a mix of paid licenses.

Thanks!

[YouGotServered]

That makes sense but is a little disappointing Veeam is super generous with the community edition and other free licensing, so I have absolutely no ground to be upset, but it would be super cool if we could mix free and paid.

[Anguel]

Or at least add the 10 free VULs that community edition already offers to the socket based VBR Essentials edition we pay for. This way we can backup a few important physical servers and workstations to the repository. If 10 is too much for Veeam, maybe 5 or 3 would be also fine. Small businesses with only one server currently receive only 2 old-style agent licenses that I find useless, as they are not even sufficient to license a single agent in workstation or server mode (because that requires 3 old-style licenses).
If not wanting to offer support for free Agents is the problem, as stated in the other thread, this should be a possible way to go. I.e. we get a few licenses but are not entitled to use any support for the Agents, same as in community edition. I have actually not seen any other paid software that offers fewer features than its free edition does so far. With the current licensing scheme I really feel punished in contrast to the free community edition that offers 10 VULs as I don't get these in VBR essentials. Having to manage an extra server with additional repositories, extra external backup disks etc. and paying for an extra Windows license just to run Community Edition in parallel is not an option for small companies that don't have extra IT staff.

[Vitaliy S.]

This way we can backup a few important physical servers and workstations to the repository. If 10 is too much for Veeam, maybe 5 or 3 would be also fine. Small businesses with only one server currently receive only 2 old-style agent licenses that I find useless, as they are not even sufficient to license a single agent in workstation or server mode (because that requires 3 old-style licenses).

Workstation agent can definitely be run with this number of gifted instances (in standard edition 1 workstation consumes 1 instance).

[Gostev]

Or at least add the 10 free VULs that community edition already offers to the socket based VBR Essentials edition we pay for. This way we can backup a few important physical servers and workstations to the repository. If 10 is too much for Veeam, maybe 5 or 3 would be also fine. Small businesses with only one server currently receive only 2 old-style agent licenses that I find useless, as they are not even sufficient to license a single agent in workstation or server mode (because that requires 3 old-style licenses).

Be sure to ask Santa about this one - and then who knows, may be you will get it with v10...

[Anguel]

Indeed, I heard that Santa regularly looks at Veeam forums, so we never give up hope, renew our licenses and who knows, maybe all children will be happy some day