[V13] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Release Schedule and Deployment Options

[Gostev]

Last updated: September 3, 2025

This topic is for general Veeam Backup & Replication V13 questions.

Questions specific to the software appliance are collected here instead > [V13] FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: Veeam Software Appliance

Both FAQ topics are constantly expanded. Help us improve them by posting your questions with [V13] tag in the topic name, and we will add good questions into the appropriate FAQ. Just please be sure to thoroughly review What's New in V13 document before asking.

Table of Contents
Deployment Options
Release Schedule
Risk & Reward for Early Release Adopters
V13 Licensing
Upgrading to V13
Converting to Software Appliance

[Gostev]

V13 offers a choice between two deployment options:
1. Installable software for Microsoft Windows (same as all previous versions, this will remain available also for V13)
2. Hardened Software Appliance (new deployment option with V13)

The most important thing to know is that both are running the same, shared cross-platform Veeam Backup & Replication V13 code. This means all new V13 features are available for both deployment options (for example, the new Web UI or centrally-managed Veeam Infrastructure Appliances). Again, it is the same exact code for both. Internally, we answered many questions by merely reminding this simple fact.

The only differences are software appliance High Availability and other appliance-specific features, such as everything that has to deal with the underlying OS management, which obviously does not apply to installable software.

[Gostev]

With V13 we're trying something we have never done before: the "early release" approach (previously referred to as "Supported Preview" in my VeeamON 2025 keynote).

Specifically, we're pulling the Veeam Software Appliance (VSA) release a few months ahead and making its early release (version 13.0.0) available to start getting feedback on this brand-new deployment option sooner. This acceleration is achieved by not including in this early release a few traditionally QA-heavy features such as upgrade from V12 and Veeam Cloud Connect, as well as a few net new V13 features with lower readiness state. However, all the features included are intended for production use, and the early release is fully supported by our Customer Support.

Given the current lack of ability to convert from V12 to Veeam Software Appliance (more on this below), the early release is intended solely for net new Veeam deployments. For many, this provides a great opportunity to rearchitect your Veeam deployment to reap the benefits of all the scalability improvements of the past releases. And of course, you can always import your existing backups into the new deployment.

We expect general availability of the full Veeam Data Platform release (version 13.0.1) in Q4 2025. This will deliver fully featured V13 of the installable software for Microsoft Windows as well as the remaining functionality postponed from the early release of Veeam Software Appliance.

[Gostev]

As with any new major release, early adopters will weigh risk vs. reward of jumping on it. And with Veeam Software Appliance, considerations are even more complex due to the move to a re-platformed solution. I tried to group main considerations below.

Stability and Reliability

Making the Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) code cross-platform required removing all Windows OS dependencies, from basic WinAPI calls to the usage Microsoft RPC protocol, which resulted in over 60% of codebase updated – significantly more than in any previous major releases, increasing the risks of encountering teething issues in the business logic.

The good news is that actual data processing engine has been cross-platform since inception, which is what allowed us to support running some key backup infrastructure components on Linux since V1. Originally written in native code and always compiled for both Windows and Linux, this holy grail of VBR is least impacted by the transition, and we expect the least surprises here.

Scalability and Performance

Simply put, V13 blows all previous versions out of the water as it comes to performance and scalability, and that's not even specific to the fact that Veeam Software Appliance is Linux based, as Windows installable software will offer the same improvements of shared cross-platform code. My only concern here would be corner cases of complex deployments scenarios that have potentially escaped our performance QA labs. But in general, there should be little to worry about these two aspects.

Total Cost of Ownership

While being an early adopter of a major release of any software generally means spending more time on the phone with Technical Support, software appliance specifically offers significant TCO reduction for new deployments which may balance this out. Here's the direct feedback from one of our beta testers who is committed to jumping on the early release immediately:

They are aware that they will be an early adopter, that Veeam Software Appliance is a totally new product and can contain some bugs. The main reasons why they would like to start immediately with VSA are:
- It saves them a whole lot of work if they don’t have to set up a new backup domain
- No new backup domain will also save them time on configuring the network, firewalls, etc.
- VSA is pre-hardened and is secure out of the box, which further saves time
- Automatic patching is also a huge time saver
- They are impressed by some new V13 features

[Gostev]

For the installable software for Windows, the licensing remains unchanged in V13. This means you can continue using whatever license you are using today for your current V12 installation:
- Veeam Universal License (VUL)
- Rental license
- NFR license
- Legacy Socket-based license
- Community Edition

For the Veeam Software Appliance V13, only the following licenses can be used:
- Veeam Universal License (VUL)
- Rental license
- NFR license

In addition, there's one temporary limitation for Veeam Essential licenses: initially, VSA deployments will be supported only in a VM on any hypervisor supported by Veeam. Deployments on physical servers will NOT be supported due to the high cost and complexity of support cases that involve troubleshooting hardware-specific issues on non-Enterprise grade hardware smaller customers tend to use, as well as the sheer size of our Essentials customer base. Since this is intended to be a temporary limitation to help alleviate support load spike, we're not enforcing it in the product itself but with our Customer Support policies only. In future, we plan to allow using any server hardware that achieves the "Veeam Ready – Appliance" certification also to Veeam Essentials users.

If you own a legacy Socket-based license, please be aware that converting from Sockets to VUL is now easier than ever at the price of your maintenance renewal, and it enables the flexibility of a growing list of hypervisor and cloud alternatives, unstructured data and more.

[Gostev]

The in-place upgrade of the existing Windows-based V12 backup servers to V13 will become available with the release of V13 installable software for Windows (version 13.0.1, expected in Q4 2025).

Upgrading your Windows-based backup servers to V13 will also serve as the preparation for migration to Veeam Software Appliance, as at least initially such conversion will only be possible from V13.

[Gostev]

For our existing customers with Windows-based backup servers, we want to make your journey to Veeam Software Appliance as straightforward as possible. While direct migration from Windows installs to the new Veeam Software Appliance is not available in the early release of software appliance, we are actively developing a conversion toolset to be made available in future. This will allow anyone to effortlessly transition when you're ready.

By far, our main concern in all this is our Customer Support team's load. Because if anything at all breaks during the migration, they will be forced to troubleshoot consequences. Therefore, any sort of mass conversion right now can easily turn into tsunami that will overwhelm our support organization, impacting SLAs for all customers. Not to mention our support engineers will need time to build VSA expertise before every one of them is able to confidently take VSA support cases, and this ramp up alone may take some months.

Recognizing these challenges, we're taking the following measures:

1. We've created the conversion sign up page so that when the toolset is ready for customers to start migration, we can artificially pace the conversions by inviting customers from the list to convert on a first come – first served basis, at a pace that is comfortable for our Customer Support organization to absorb.

2. We may require mandatory Professional Services involvement for conducting migration depending on the size and complexity of the customer’s environment, otherwise our Customer Support will be forced into becoming Professional Services. Besides, this conversion gives our larger customers a perfect opportunity to rearchitect their many years old deployment to leverage state-of-the-art capabilities and current best practices, which is best done with the help of Professional Services.

If you have a relatively small Veeam deployment, you can probably see from all of the above how for the time being, a fresh new install will be the best approach of converting to Veeam Software Appliance whenever possible. Especially since one particular conversion concern we have is all the Windows-specific leftovers that have potentially accumulated in the product configuration over years of in-place upgrades, the leftovers which the new code may not be ready to encounter when running on Linux.