License (re)evaluation

[marcin.koczkodaj]

My company is using Veeam for O365 to backup cloud mailboxes (at the moment still version 2.0). I have a question regarding license - is it possible to force re-evalutation the number of used licenses? I removed a few users from O365 (who are no longer working), so Get-VBOOrganizationUser doesn't count them anymore, but licenses status in GUI still shows the same number of licenses used (after a few hours). I assume there's some process which updates licensing status periodically, but it would be great to have more control over it and trigger such re-counting manually.

Best Regards
Marcin

[Polina]

Welcome to the Community, Marcin!

You need to wait for 31 days for those licenses to be revoked because VBO consumes each license for a month more after the user has been backed up last time. This is because when users are deleted by mistake (which we can't know if they were), you will restore them in the next few days - thus actively realizing the value provided by VBO. This is consistent with how our other products are licensed.

If you upgrade to v3, you will be able to use a special PowerShell cmdlet to free up a license immediately (note though that it will require to remove users data from all repositories as well).

Please check out these threads for more details:
veeam-backup-for-microsoft-office-365-f ... 59634.html
veeam-backup-for-microsoft-office-365-f ... 60103.html
veeam-backup-for-microsoft-office-365-f ... 58396.html

Thanks!

[marcin.koczkodaj]

Hi Polina, thank you very much for your answer.

One more question, regarding licenses consuming - just to be fully clear. Please let me know whether I'm right concerning following scenarios:
1. User has mailbox in O365, backup is performed - license is consumed (it's an obvious case).
2. User leaves the company, his/her O365 license is removed so also mailbox is deleted from O365, users is removed also from a backup job in Veeam, but:
- He/she is still visible in O365 as unlicensed account, so Get-VBOOrganizationUser command regognizes him/her.
- Data are retained in repository, according to retention policy.
In such case the license is still consumed - right?
3. The same as in point 2, but additionally we remove user from O365, so Get-VBOOrganizationUser can't find him/her anymore. Data are still retained in repository.
In such case Veeam releases the license - right?

Thanks in advance
Marcin

[nielsengelen]

For both 2 and 3, the same applies. If there is no data being backed up (regardless if the user is still there in O365 or not), the VBO license by default comes free after 31 days. Data is still there till the retention policy is reached.

[marcin.koczkodaj]

Thanks again for all answers.
Finally I performed upgrade to version 3.0 and have to admit, that the Get-VBOLicensedUser is very powerful command - thanks for adding it. I collect data from O365 and from this command to the SQL database and can join them using "OfficeID" attribute (which is user GUID in O365) - this way I can perfectly check who consumes a license. But one thing is not clear for me - if a user leaves the company and I want to release his/her license immediately (what is now possible with Remove-VBOLicensedUser command), why should I remove also this user's backed up data??? This is officially mentioned here:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo36 ... tml?ver=30
and has completely no sense to me, as backed up data, stored in repository, are not counted against used licenses number. So why is removing this data from repository required??? What happens when I run only Remove-VBOLicensedUser without Remove-VBOEntityData? Are the data removed automatically in the background? Please let me know and also be aware, that for companies with huge employees turnover it may be a serious problem.

Regards
Marcin

[Polina]

Hi Marcin,

This is required to prevent any cheating on licensing. As an option, you could export user's data to another store and then clean it up from your VBO repositories.
If you run Remove-VBOLicensedUser without Remove-VBOEntityData, the request will fail with a warning that user's data is still present in a repository.

[aich365]

Hi Marcin
Best thing to do when someone leaves is convert mailbox to Shared Mailbox and give leaver's manager access.
Shared Mailboxes are not counted for licensing
Regards