Licensing issue: I've done a stupid thing.

[frakka]

Hi, all.

Our support for "Veeam Availability Suite Enterprise Plus" 10 Sockets was expired on 25 Sept, 2020. Unfortunately our management choose to not renew it so we kept our current server as is, on version 10.0.0.4661 installed on 30 March, 2020.
Yesterday, after reading the Gostev newsletter about the cumulative path for Backup&Replication 10a, I thought to apply it before the v11 was relased rely on our perpetual licence of v10.

Stupid thing -> I didn't an image backup of our server (physical) before upgrade.

After the installation I no longer can connect to our Veeam server because a pop-up stated that "You are not eligible to install this product version, bacause it was shipped after the support expiration date in the provided license file".

• I supposed to be granted to install cumulative patches under the same major release, isn't it (obviosuly not, apparently) ?
• There is a way to rollback? I tried to uninstall Veeam from the server and reinstall it from the previous ISO but the pop-up still appears.
• Can I install a new server form scratch using the previous ISO and apply the expired license, to import the configuration backup and bring it back?
• There is some other way to get it working again?

[Gostev]

Can I install a new server form scratch using the previous ISO and apply the expired license, to import the configuration backup and bring it back?

This should work fine. Since you own the perpetual license, it will work forever with any product build shipped before the Support Expiration date on the license.

Note that this was not the case with legacy license files, when our perpetual licenses were set to expire 10 years from the issue date. So some really old customers already had to contact Veeam to re-issue them. Which was a bad design really, since it requires that Veeam still exists at any time in the future. So I got rid of this limitation in the new license file format, and the currently issued perpetual licenses are truly perpetual.

Other than that - yes, this behavior is fully expected as per Veeam EULA:

6.0 Maintenance and Support
Software updates cannot be applied to the Software with an expired Maintenance.

Having said that, I'm investigating why the patch wizard itself allowed you to proceed, as this is unexpected.

[Gostev]

It appears that while the product installer does have the logic that prevent you from continuing the setup under these circumstances, our new cumulative patch engine does not. We will add it there as well for the next patch. Very sorry for the inconvenience!

[frakka]

I was contacted by a Veeam representative which told me to open a support request even if our support contract is expired to help us to restore the funcionality of the server. Something went very wrong because even bring to server to "Community edition" says that some "critical files corrupted" were found.

I'm installing the server form scratch and support will help me to import the latest configuration backup early than my upgrade.

[frakka]

I installed the server from scratch and Veeam Support helped me, providing an updated license file of my expired support contract I used to restore the server and import the configuration backup so I bringh the server working again.

Many thanks to all Veeam team.

[ViperDaSnake]

It appears that while the product installer does have the logic that prevent you from continuing the setup under these circumstances

Looks like the current installer lost this feature.
I was able to upgrade my install and then was promptly locked out.
I have a current license, but it was not loaded on the server.
I didn't see a way to update the license.
It just tells you no, and then closes.
This really needs to be fixed.

[Gostev]

We will look into it and see if we can replicate the issue. But why was not your current license loaded on the server?