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AlexHeylin
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WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

This will be a particular problem for service providers who are renting licenses and charging customers and paying Veeam monthly based on license counts. If you're an SP and relying on Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport for calculating your charges / usage then I suggest you manually audit each VBO server and check the license count shown in the GUI against what Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport returns.

We have identified a VBO server which serves a single tenant where the GUI reports 450 licensed used, but Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport reports 625. 450 is very close to the expected number, based on live O365 licensing. 625 is just wrong. The tenant has retired around 10-20 accounts in the last month - definitely not 175 accounts.

For the avoidance of doubt, we're correctly invoking this with (variables converted to values for display here):
Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport -StartTime 11/01/2021 00:00:00 -EndTime 11/30/2021 23:59:59 -Path C:\windows\temp\Report-VboUsage\2021-12-10\report-license.csv -Format CSV;

This is a slight variation of Example 3 from https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbo36 ... tml?ver=50

Support case: 05176498
AlexHeylin
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

We've now found this on a multi-tenant server. GUI says 199 licenses in use.
Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport -StartTime (Get-Date).AddMonths(-1) -EndTime (Get-Date) -Path C:\share\ -Format CSV
returns 208 rows, of which three are trial licenses - so that gives 205 payable licenses. Again Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport is over-reporting.

Also found on another single tenant VBO server
Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport -StartTime (Get-Date).AddMonths(-1) -EndTime (Get-Date) -Path C:\ -Format CSV
returns 113 of which 6 are trials (113-6 = 107) GUI shows 102 used. 107 != 102. Again Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport is over-reporting.
Mike Resseler
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by Mike Resseler »

@AlexHeylin

I just requested our team to look into it. If needed I will move it to the DEV team asap
AlexHeylin
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

Thanks Mike.

FYI - I think I've traced two issues

A. The PDF report and the CSV report give the same info but presented it in different ways, which appears to make them disagree with each other. This isn't helpful. I suggest either
  • The PDF could be reformatted to clarify that the "Total licenses used" count is actually not "Total", it's "Paid" or "Chargeable" (thus EXCLUDES the "Total trial licenses" count)
  • Present exactly the same data as in the CSV. Total license count to be the total number of licenses used (paid and trial).
B. Both reports appear to include O365 mailboxes which don't have O365 licenses assigned to them (thus don't require VBO licenses). The numbers aren't exact, but if you subtract the number of unlicensed mailboxes from the total number in the License Overview Report you get a number very very close to the VBO license count shown in the VBO GUI.
AlexHeylin
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

I've just had a T2 engineer call me and we've verified that while the license overview reports, and the auto generated "official" rental license usage reports in C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup365\Reports report the same / very similar data - that data is quite different to the data shown in the GUI, and the output from both
Get-VBOLicense
$(Get-VBOLicensedUser | where licensestate -eq licensed).count
Both of these return exactly what we expect based on the VBO GUI, and the tenant O365 license assignment.

Currently in some circumstances neither the License Overview Report or the License Usage Report are correct. This applies to both the CSV and the PDF versions.

I've also observed that the License Usage Report has a "Restore Points" count which is very likely incorrect - or doesn't count what you'd expect (the number of restore points available across the job as a whole). This tenant / daily job has been backing up to a repo which was set to keep "Forever" since February 2020 - yet the March 2020 License Usage Report showed 123 restore points, and this number has remained around that level. The September 2021 report shows 120 restore points. As no retention policy has been removing old restore points, and the job has been backing up up daily - from Jan 2020 -> Sept 2021 there should be very roughly 630 restore points.

Also in the last two reports the Last Restore Point has been listed as "1/1/0001 12:00:00 AM".

Also please stop randomly outputting non-locale USA date format. If you don't want to use the locale, or use dd/MM/yyyy for fear of confusing our American friends then use yyyy-MM-dd which at least is very obvious what it is whereas dd/MM and MM/dd are easily confused where no format is specified.
Mike Resseler
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by Mike Resseler »

@AlexHeylin

Unfortunately, due to the holidays and taking a few days off, I haven't been able to speak to our support team. However, I see it was escalated to our DEV teams and they have done their first investigation.
AlexHeylin
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

This was traced to the issue " In organizations added with basic authentication, a user with a mailbox placed on Litigation Hold continues to consume the license after their Office 365 license has been removed." which resolved in v4c https://www.veeam.com/kb3145

Unfortunately it's not just that the report was wrong - so was all license charging for all customers using basic auth with litigation hold between the bug being created (date unknown) and v4c being installed. I somewhat feel that Veeam could have done more to make SPs aware of the impact of this after it was discovered on 13th May 2020. As SPs pay per mailbox-license I think this should have had heightened visibility and been specifically alerted to CSPs reporting monthly rental license counts.

Yes - we should have read the release notes, and should keep things updated - but with everything else that's going on (particularly with CSPs who are MSPs, for whom VCSP is only a small part of their business) that's often just not going to happen for EVERY release of EVERY Veeam product on EVERY server. An email from Veeam (to both billing and tech contacts) saying "Sorry CSPs, we've found an issue that can cause us to overcharge you and you may overcharge your customers. You have these servers which are running the affected versions... Here's the details... Please update to fix it then contact us to discuss a refund" doesn't seem an unreasonable ask.

An additional issue was the presentation of the PDF version of the report which suggests the numbers should be interpreted differently to the CSV version. The numbers are correct in both - but the PDF appears to imply something which it should not, and is not true. Support have told me the PDF will be reformatted to address this.

Thanks :-)
Mike Resseler
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by Mike Resseler »

Noted,

I am in the discussion now around this topic, and we should find indeed a better way to warn people around specific topics (like licensing). To be continued
AlexHeylin
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Re: WARNING: Get-VBOLicenseOverviewReport can return wrong license count

Post by AlexHeylin »

Thank Mike. :-)
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