Socket to VUL free conversion offer - the truth please

[bubba198]

Hey everyone,

Subject says it all. Nobody would tell the truth and that's normal and expected when it comes to sales. I did read what I could find relevant on the forums - nada; I opened a case with Veeam support (that's right I still have active support) - even worse; useless and evasive answers (or maybe support staff get reprehended if they share the truth with a customer; who knows). I can relate; don't want to get anyone in a jam with management lol

What's the deal. How many VUL workloads per socket do you get if one wants to take the deal and do the free VUL conversion from perpetual socket license to VUL?

Thanks
~B

[jorgedlcruz]

Hello,
Sorry to hear the frustration with this simple process. As far as I know from my SE days, back in March this year, the answer is the same as this veeam-backup-replication-f2/vul-convers ... ml#p348634 starting at 7:1 ratio but can be 15:1 if you upload your VBR logs and they prove that is what you use today.

Double check with your Sales, and Support. I think nothing has changed since then.

Let us know

[david.domask]

Hey B,

Just from the Support Side, continue to work with Sales/Renewals on the details and request escalation to the sales/renewals manager if there are concerns. I think the answers you got from the Support Engineers are non-committal just because the Support Engineers honestly aren't able to give you such an answer and don't want to tell you something wrong and give you the impression we're doing a shell game or something on you. (I appreciate your willingness to consider some good faith interpretations )

The Support Team itself doesn't deal with this and as far as I know the exact rate tends to be discussed on a case by case basis, but it starts at 7:1 like Jorge said. Support though won't be able to give you the answer you seek as we just don't have any say in the end contract.

At best, we can maybe help get you in contact with your sales/renewals rep if you aren't already (feel free to open a General case to ask for help), but Support itself has no role in the sales/renewal process. Not trying to pass the buck, but just want to make sure you're talking to the right people.

[Regnor]

I don't think that the process is a secret. Just ask your partner or reseller to send you a quote for the migration from socket to VUL. In addition give them the number of VMs you want to protect. They will work everything out for you, and like Jorge says it could be possible that you'll need to provide some part of your logs.

[bubba198]

hey guys, thank you for the answers; that's exactly what I was hoping to learn htere; you're all awesome!

ok cool -- best case scenario sounds like 15:1 for the VUL conversion. So then the MBA question - why on earth would anyone even remotely consider the conversion?

Even if the offer was 50:1 one is still moving from limitless workloads to a finite number of workloads?

I must be missing something - do educate me please. I get it - the extra cloud features but it's far more economical to just buy separate VUL from scratch to do the cloud thing instead of killing one's perpetual limitless socket based license and converting it to VUL.

Thanks
Boyan

[Regnor]

From a cost perspective, you'll have an advantage if you have many cores with fewer VMs to protect. Just calculate your CPU/VM ratio and compare both socket and VUL pricing. Also keep in mind that VULs are more flexible; if you move workloads or add hosts, you won't need any additional licenses.

In addition you have the enhanced feature set and better support, depending on what you have in place at the moment; VUL includes all features (Enterprise+) and production support.

But at the end it comes down to your environment and your requirements. If VUL doesn't fit for you, then keep your socket licenses.

[soncscy]

> one is still moving from limitless workloads to a finite number of workloads?

Just my take, but not quite accurate. You move from limitless _virtual machine only_ workloads to more defined amounts of any workloads. I get this comes down to just "play nicer with Veeam's licensing", but sockets are only viable for a single workload type, while VUL is applicable to any. As Regnor said also, even if you think you'd never use those other features ENT+ gives, you'd be surprised how many times clients start to explore the new features and really get into them.

But I think Veeam has said plenty of times that if your use case has no need for such things, then just stick with sockets.

However, if you're going to introduce or explore basically any other type of workload, VUL really simplifies it and it's far easier to expand and know what to expand (since there's just the one option that applies for all). Suddenly, your client requests to protect MS365 data/Azure Files/EC2 instances/whatever you can be ready to go "now" without a single change on the licensing side. And a lot of workloads are changing as technology updates. A local file server for some serves better as a File Gateway on some cloud, so the responsible team moves it to that. Or they move some DBs to similarly hosted solutions. Or they start containerizing a lot of stuff so you're not working strictly with virtual machines in the classic sense.

Basically, with my clients and their shrinking IT teams, some workloads are being moved out of local VMs to other platforms constantly; getting them on VUL means that nothing needs to change and the backups can be ready as soon as the workload is, and my experience is that usually they don't add additional applications to the virtual environment to replace it, they just reuse the resources on other applications (meaning the workload density on the hosts goes down over time). I'm not saying virtualization is dying or anything like that, it's here to stay for a looooong time. But there are compelling alternatives for a lot of application workloads that socket licensing just doesn't work for.

So just some additional thoughts. It's not for everyone, so if the above ideas don't match your planned future, then just stick with sockets But for my clients, we see these shifts pretty frequently.