Mixing free and licensed agents still not possible?

[Anguel]

Hi!

Because I still see contradicting responses from Veeam licensing support and the forums and I am still extremely confused by complex Veeam licensing (actually since many years) I would like to kindly ask again if I can continue to still use most of the Veeam agents in FREE mode but also somehow make use of the gifted licenses in my Veeam Backup Essentials perpetual 2 socket license.

And if it is possible please let me know how to achieve this license mix:
Allow agents to consume licenses first and then REVOKE for most agents???
-OR- create some kind of protection group as proposed by support???

Many thanks in advance.

Anguel

[Mildur]

You cannot mix different licenses on a single vbr server.
You could migrate your „Veeam Backup Essentials“ to a VUL License. Then you will have also Production support for the agents.

It should be possible to use the free agents managed on the agent itself to send the backup to a vbr Backup repo. But you can‘t manage free agents from inside the vbr server. This needs paid licenses.
And if this Veeam Environment is a managed backup service for your customers, don‘t use free license at all. It is not allowed. Only for your own environment.

Allow agents to consume licenses first and then REVOKE for most agents???

This looks like some sort of theft to me

[Anguel]

Thanks Mildur,

It is my own small business environment and all I need is to have multiple backup jobs on one or two PCs which I need a licensed agent for. So I thought that there must be some way to make use of the 2 instances included in VBE. What kind of "theft" are you talking about? I think it is "theft" that I paid for 2 included instances that I am not able to use...

One of the reasons I went with Veeam in the past was the fact that the backup agent was free so investing in VBR (although not cheap for a small business) was still an affordable option. I think it is also ridiculous that the community edition still offers many more instances than the paid perpetual editions. I would immediately sign that I don't want any support if I am allowed to mix licenses. To be honest my experience with support (at least for small businesses like mine) was everything but good.

Anguel

[Mildur]

With Veeam V10 and above, you are able to backup 6 Windows Client OS (i assume that are your pcs) official licences by the 2 gifted instances. Do you have more pcs with Windows Client OS? 1x instance = Windows Client OS Agents. It should be possible to configure multiple backup jobs for the same agents in the vbr console with managed mode.
If you need more, i think you are able to buy a 5er VUL package and combine this package with your socket license.

What kind of "theft" are you talking about?

I was thinking that way:
1. use the license to configure
2. revoke it
3. use the agent without the license

If I need it, i pay it
I only revoke something, if I don‘t need it anymore and agent could be completely removed from the client.
If i revoke something, and use it after that, i don‘t dee the revocation as a allowed thing.

[Anguel]

Where is it actually officially and clearly stated that free agents cannot be mixed with licensed agents?

[Mildur]

From the guide, only paid licences can be merged:

License Types Available for Merging

You can merge licenses of the following types:

- Perpetual Socket license and Subscription Instance license
- Perpetual Socket license and Perpetual Instance license.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... or-merging

The guides doesn‘t mention merging Free License. The software doesn‘t allow you to use 10 community edition license to merge with paid license. A paid license will override the community edition license.

It is not possible to merge community edition with paid license. You have community edition or you have paid license. Thats the deal.

I don‘t see veeam changing that license behaviour for us customers.

[Anguel]

Well, it looks like Agent Workstation License is only able to run multiple jobs to CLOUD, so this does not help me at all. I.e. I need SERVER edition to be able to schedule a simple second job to my VBR server.
The only thing I want to achieve is that an external Bitlocker-enabled USB drive attached to a PC can be backed up during daily operation, because at night when the PC wakes up and backs itself up to the VBR server there is no access to this USB drive (because of Bitlocker) and the whole backup just fails. Obviously, I will not pay for 20 VUL just to get that simple thing done on one PC...

[Gostev]

Why paying for 20 VUL? The minimum VUL purchase is 10 licenses (or even 5 in case of Veeam Essentials).

But I think even better option economically would be for you to migrate your 2 sockets licenses to VUL licenses. After the migration, you will be provided enough VUL licenses to cover all your VMs running on those 2 sockets today (and actually a bit more since we will round to the nearest 5). Plus, since VUL license usage can be exceeded, you will effectively have up to 5 extra VUL licenses for those few additional machines you're wanting to protect.