Licensing Counts

[dpearceFL]

Case: 03114426 Version 1.5.0.1309

We started with this product a few months ago with a licenses count of 110. No one on our end knew exactly how many mailboxes we would be backing up so we just starting backing up everything. We got to about 150 mailboxes and so I started excluding mailboxes we didn't need to backup. I excluded 50+ mailboxes so we were under 110. The program told us we still had too many mailboxes. I called technical support and they told me the excluded mailboxes would be flushed out in 31 days.

After 90 days we get an ominous dialog box tell us we are still over the limit and that some mailboxes would NOT be backed up.

I called technical support again and I was told I have three options:
1 - Buy more licenses (for a year) until another 31 days expires at which point the additional licenses do us no good.
2 - Wait 31 days and see is the excluded mailboxes get flushed out. This would leave some mailboxes not backed up.
3 - Wipe out the repo and start all over again. This rather defeats the goal of a repo and maintaining history.

Help! There should be a way to trigger the cleanup of the excluded mailboxes without waiting the 31 days. Please. We're a non-profit and spending money is never easy.

Thanks.

[Mike Resseler]

Hi dpearceFL,

First: Welcome to the forums.

Second: I assume you have excluded the mailboxes before the 90 days are over? If so, those 50 something licenses should have been freed after 31 days. If this didn't happen then there is something wrong. Can you confirm that the cleanup is older than 31 days?

Cheers
Mike

[dpearceFL]

Before and after the 90 day period. I have been excluding mailboxes for some time.

[dpearceFL]

Here is the header from the backup job report. Where does the "341 mailboxes not licensed" figure come from?

Code: Select all

Backup job: Cloud
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
Warning
121 of 121 mailboxes processed
Wednesday, August 1, 2018 1:36:43 AM
Success121Start time12:00:01 AMMailboxes processed121 of 121Details
Warning0End time1:36:43 AMItems transferred115969341 mailboxes not licensed
Error0Duration1:36:42Data transferred1.8 GB

[Mike Resseler]

I can see that you are still trying to process 121 mailboxes which is still more than you actual count of licenses
For the 341, not sure what that is but it is also attached to the items transferred?

[dpearceFL]

But 121-110=11 mailboxes. Not the 22 being reported by the program.

Whether it is 110, 121 or 341, the math does not add up.

[Mike Resseler]

Is the 122 what you see in the licensing dialog? (Through main menu > License)

[dpearceFL]

The saga continues and I am getting tired of it all.

I upgraded to 2.0 and the number of mailboxes being processed went from 110 to 50.

Now sales is telling me the license count applies to "users" not "mailboxes". Since I am only presented with a list of mailboxes, how do I know what licenses I have allocated and to who?

Can someone from Veeam management help me understand how to know how many licenses to buy?

There needs to be some accounting report to tell me what users by name are licenses and when their license will be purged.

I have admitted defeat and will be starting a new repository which defeats the idea of having an archive of messages after they have been deleted.

Technical support has been helpful but with an answer of "that is just the way it is" I feel totally ignored.

Thanks.

[Mike Resseler]

DpearceFL,

The licensing is as follows:
- For each user that you protect one of the following objects: Mail, Archive, OneDrive for Business, Personal SharePoint Site you consume a license. You can select one, all 4, or any combination from that user - we will still consume one license only.
- Shared Mailboxes, Office 365 Groups are not to counted as a user and therefore don't consume a license.

Now, to figure out which users are licensed... (I am aware we need reporting around this and we will start actively working on more items)

Let's use PowerShell to determine this

Code: Select all

$org = Get-VBOOrganization -Name "nameoftheorg"
$users = Get-VBOOrganizationUser -Organization $org -Type user 

If you do this, then you will put all users in your organization (from the type user, which is what we license) into the variable $users.
Now to get to the users who are protected, you can use the where-clause with .IsBackedUp -eq "True" to see only the protected users)
For example:

Code: Select all

$protectedusers = $users | Where-Object {$_.IsBackedUp -eq "True"}

And then you can use the $protectedusers to count or dump it in an excel sheet.

Makes sense?

[wileywimberly]

Hi,

I am using the following Powershell based on the example given here.

Code: Select all

PS > foreach ($org in $(Get-VBOOrganization)) { $used = $(Get-VBOOrganizationUser -Organization $org -Type User | ? {$_.IsBackedUp -eq 'True'}).count; [PSCustomObject]@{ Organization = $org.id; LicensesUsed = $used }}

Organization                         LicensesUsed
------------                         ------------
ed945a5d-2177-4418-8b06-9b93e6a1e804          180
16361d66-1257-40b5-ac19-b961e2db2895            4

The UI shows that there are 173 licenses used.

The counts here are not matching what the UI shows for the total licenses used. Are there any other checks that need to be performed to get the correct numbers?

Any suggestions?

[Mike Resseler]

I believe there are actually some users we don't need to count but are seen as users (I believe the discovery mailbox is seen as a user type in Office 365).

To help us, could you do an export of the actual users? Maybe you can spot items such as that mailbox or meeting room type of mailboxes?

We don't license those

[wileywimberly]

It looks like the discovery mailboxes and rooms are showing up as backed up users with the powershell below. The count is getting closer if these are excluded, but it still doesn't match.

I don't see a property on the returned user objects that would be useful to get an accurate license count. I guess we could do some pattern matching on DisplayName or UserName, but that seems likely to generate false matches.

We need a way to get an accurate license count per tenant. Any other suggestions? I can provide a full dump of users out of band if that helps. Should I open a support case?

Code: Select all

PS > $users = Get-VBOOrganization | Get-VBOOrganizationUser -Type User | ? { $_.IsBackedUp -eq 'True' }
PS > $users | ? { $_.DisplayName -match 'Discovery|Room' } | select OrganizationId,DisplayName

OrganizationId                       DisplayName
--------------                       -----------
ed945a5d-2177-4418-8b06-9b93e6a1e804 Room, Conference Board Room
ed945a5d-2177-4418-8b06-9b93e6a1e804 Discovery Search Mailbox
ed945a5d-2177-4418-8b06-9b93e6a1e804 Room, Conference Room Ops
ed945a5d-2177-4418-8b06-9b93e6a1e804 Room, Conference Room Sales
16361d66-1257-40b5-ac19-b961e2db2895 Discovery Search Mailbox


PS > $users | gm


   TypeName: Veeam.Archiver.PowerShell.Model.VBOOrganizationUser

Name           MemberType Definition
----           ---------- ----------
Equals         Method     bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode    Method     int GetHashCode()
GetType        Method     type GetType()
ToString       Method     string ToString()
DisplayName    Property   string DisplayName {get;}
IsBackedUp     Property   bool IsBackedUp {get;}
OfficeId       Property   guid OfficeId {get;}
OnPremisesId   Property   guid OnPremisesId {get;}
OrganizationId Property   guid OrganizationId {get;}
Type           Property   Veeam.Archiver.PowerShell.Model.Enums.VBOOrganizationUserType Type {get;}
UserName       Property   string UserName {get;}

[Mike Resseler]

Wiley,

We are working on something (but not ready and no ETA) that will show better which user is licensed. For now, the count indeed is not correct because of non-licensed users that are seen as type "users" through PowerShell.

Any change there are shared mailboxes in that list?

[Mike Resseler]

Wiley,

Scratch that previous message . Please contact support. I have been informed we have a hotfix ready for it

Cheers
Mike

[wileywimberly]

Thanks Mike. I opened case 03193313.

[n0creativity]

Mike,
Are you saying there's also a hotfix for better license usage display?

We've already installed a hotfix that's supposed to fix resource mailboxes being counted as used licenses (we're still waiting the requisite 31 days to see if it works, which is a bit annoying cause the bug put us over the 10% "buffer").

[Mike Resseler]

Hey David,

I believe that is the hotfix that I was referring to.

[bbtech]

New to VBO and Veeam in general. How can we get this hotfix?

Also surprised to find out there's not an easy way to see how many licenses we're using (we're going with the rental option), I assumed that was a given...

[d.valdes]

I am also having a similar issue to the one mentioned in this post. I have several hundred users and I have purchased a license for 250 users. However, I run my backup, 224 users are successfully backed up but I am exceeding my license count by 13. I spoke with support and they have suggested that I apply the hotfix to the server and I did. I am still having the same issue. My license count still shows 250, used shows 224 but my reports say I have exceeded the license count by 13.
I just want to back up my 237 users.
I have verified there are no rooms or resources in my backup job but I still cannot back up all of my users.

[Polina]

All,

A set of bug fixes for VBO v2, including the resource mailbox licensing, is now available with the cumulative patch KB2765. Please see KB 2765 for more details.
If you still experience any issues after installing this patch, please let me know and contact support as well.
Thanks!

[Polina]

Daniel,

Is your support case still open? Please share its ID here, so that I could take a closer look at it along with the logs. Thanks!