Licence question - company leavers

[AlexB82]

We've been using VBO for some months now, and it's a great product. We have a question regarding licences used for people who've left the company....

When we have people leave, their accounts are disabled, they're unlicenced from 365, and their Azure account is removed (leaving on-prem only). However, the number of licences used doesn't go down - is this normal behaviour? Are we going to need to carry on maintaining extra licences for every person who leaves?

Cheers !!

[Polina]

Hi Alex,

Unused licenses will be revoked automatically after 31 days since the last backup. We also provide an extra grace count of 10 user accounts or 10% of the license count (whichever is greater) granted if you exceed the limit of purchased licenses.

Also, when you upgrade to version 3 (which will be GA very soon!), you'll be able to revoke the unneeded licenses right when you need it. The only requirement will be to remove the corresponding users' data from all the backup repositories.

[whimark]

Is the backupdata for a user removed after 31 days since removal of the account in Office365?

//Markus

[Polina]

Backed up data will be removed according to the specified retention.

[whimark]

Ok thanks!

[nielsengelen]

Keep in mind, you can leverage PowerShell to remove data before the retention is reached by using Remove-VBOEntityData.

[tsanfilipp]

Quick question - why would I need to remove the no longer licensed user's data from the repository? What if I need to hold onto that data for the retention period, in case of restore requests? Are you saying that if I now remove a license, I also have to remove the data for that user as well? But, if the user leaves and I don't back him/her up for 31 days, the license releases and I don't have to remove the data?

[Mike Resseler]

Tim,

I think there is some misunderstanding here so let me explain:

1. License:
The license will be revoked after 31 days so you can reuse it. The data itself will not be deleted at all and will remain there for the time of the retention. So yes, if the user leaves and he is not protected anymore for 31 days, the data is still there and the license is released.

2. Remove-VBOEntityData: We built this specifically for testing purposes and mistakes by accident. We heard with the previous versions that if you make mistakes during setup, re-configuration or something like that, it was not pleasant to wait for 31 days until the license has been released, even if you only had it in a job for 1 time or so. Therefore we created the possibility to revoke the license after the data of the mistake is deleted. (Obviously we ask for the deletion of that data otherwise it would be too easy to cheat with licenses )

Makes sense?

[HDClown]

Mike,

Can Remove-VBOLicensedUser be used to immediately revoke a license from a user? If so, does that users backup data get retained after using this cmdlet?

[Mike Resseler]

It can be used, but you need to remove the data of that user first. So you can't retain the license immediately without deleting the data

[Symbiot78]

I'd like to revisit this topic a bit.

I am required to keep a backup of the users mailbox & onedrive for 2 years after the user stops at the company.
I do not want to use a license for this.

if Veeam does not allow me to remove the license before I delete the data how can I achieve this?

Is there a Powershell command that can do an export to a folder for instance?

so the export would export all files out of the database and into a standard folder and files / PST would be accessible there?

I can't find a PS command that will allow me to export..

[Mike Resseler]

Martin,

You can keep the data for two years. The license will still be released after 31 days.

As for your PowerShell... I don't know them out of my head but you can start a PowerShell restore session and export the required data as PST. The PowerShell for the Veeam explorers is a bit hidden on the helpcenter I'm afraid. You can find it here: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... l?ver=95u4

[Mildur]

I'm using VBO365 for our "mail backup as a service" enviroment.
one customer has added 1250 students account to office 365 with Office A1 licensing.
Of course he does not want to have them secured with veeam backup for office 365. We also had no exclusions active at the moment of the creation of the accounts.

Now I'm trying to remove the 1250 licenses. Backup Data is already deleted.

I'm using the following powershell script:

Code: Select all

$users = Get-VBOLicensedUser | where {$_.licensestate -eq "Trial" -and $_.organizationname -eq "blablabla.onmicrosoft.com"}

foreach ($user in $users) {
   $postfach = Get-VBOLicensedUser -Name $user.username
   Remove-VBOLicensedUser -User $postfach
 }

How long does it take to remove all 1250 licenses?
Will it take some minutes/hours? I can't see any changes to number of Trial Licenses on this customer.

Opened a Support Case for that too:
04122791

[nielsengelen]

Removal should only take a few minutes normally. Reflection in GUI should be visible not much later.

[Mildur]

Ok, thank you niels. Script was successfull for all user without any backup data.
But the users are still present in the output of the command "Get-VBOLicensedUser"

I will look at the license Report tomorrow. If they are still there, I will look into this matter with veeam support.

[nielsengelen]

Keep us posted but I am sure it will be fine tomorrow.

[Mildur]

Good morning Nils

License Count was the same this morning.
What I had to do:

1. Restart "Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Service"
2. Restart "Veeam Backup Proxy for Microsoft Office 365 Service"

After that, License count was adjusted correctly

[nielsengelen]

Thanks for the update. Glad it is back to the correct value.

[jim.lowry]

Quick addition - if for some reason, you want to keep holding the user's data after the VBO retention period, you can use VBR or the Veeam Backup Agents to backup the VBO repository. The retention policy on VBR is set at the job level and is independent of the VBO repository retention period. The VBO server can still restore or read from the data now stored on the VBR repository. You just need to open the Veeam Explorers from the VBO server and browse for the data.

[francd01]

2 users have left the business and i have removed there Licences in office 365 - These Licences have been passed over to new starters.

It is the New users that Veeam office 365 Backup cannot retrieve the licences for. Any suggestion how to solve this?

[Natalia Lupacheva]

Hi Dan,

I've moved your post to the existing thread.
Please take a look at the advices in this topic, I believe they would help.

Thanks!

[Polina]

Dan,

If you reassigned licenses in O365, it can take some time to synchronize these changes across your tenant. If VBO jobs have been started immediately after the change, the information on the current users licenses might be not delivered to VBO yet.

[francd01]

This has been 1 weeks since move across
Should it take longer?

[Polina]

A week should be way more than enough.
I'd suggest you contacting our support team to let them figure out what's wrong with your current setup. And please take a minute to post your case ID here for the followup.

Thanks!

[Mildur]

Your REMOVAL of Office 365 Licenses does not remove VBO365-Licensing Requirement for this 31 days period.

The VBO365-licenses will get automatically revoked after 31 days without any new backup of this two old users.

If you do not remove all backup data manually of this 2 Users in VBO365, you will have to wait 31 Days before the VBO365 Licenses are free to use with new users.

[Polina]

@Mildur

I think we're mixing two different licensing scenarios here: removing/reassigning user license in O365, and removing/revoking user license in VBO.
And if I'm not mistaken, Dan is experiencing an issue with VBO not recognizing an O365 license reassigned to a new user.

[francd01]

@Mildur
This is the issue i am having - Help!!

I only used 5 out of the 10 Licances

[Polina]

Dan,

To make sure that I understand it correctly: You have reassigned user licenses in O365, and now you want to reassign VBO licenses accordingly, right?

Then, indeed, there're two ways of doing it: either remove those users from backup jobs and wait for 31 days until licenses are revoked automatically, or remove their backed up data from the repository and run the Remove-VBOLicensedUser cmdlet to revoke licenses.

Also, note that VBO allows to exceed licenses and this can help you to process these 2 new users without any issues.