VUL licensing query

[briggs]

Hi there.
We have been quoted something close to 50% more for our VUL licensing renewal this year, which is a huge suprise. I've asked the supplier for a serious re-count but in the mean time, can I ask a silly question about VUL requirements.

If I am consuming 4 of 10 now by backing up 4 x VMWare VM's, if I want to migrate those VM's from VMWare to Hyper-V, using Veeam, will I need another set of VUL licenses for the destination Windows environment? ie will each Windows VM be an additional VUL license consumed? They will not both be live - the VMWare environment is turned off at the final backup, wiped, and rebuilt with Windows OS and restores will in theory be done after then.

Thanks in advance!

[Mildur]

Hi Alan,

If I am consuming 4 of 10 now by backing up 4 x VMWare VM's, if I want to migrate those VM's from VMWare to Hyper-V, using Veeam, will I need another set of VUL licenses for the destination Windows environment?

Short answer, yes. These Hyper-V VMs will be recognized as new objects, therefore each migrated VM will start consuming a new instance from your license. License instances of the old VMware VMs will be automatically revoked after 31 days without a backup of the VMware VM.

You can revoke them earlier if you need to free up licenses after such a migration.

Best,
Fabian

[briggs]

Thanks Fabian, as part of this, I will have a new instance of Veeam. The old Veeam server will effectively be gone - so when I restore from files that have to be imported into the new Veeam server, will these imported files see it's a different machine and allocate a license? Or is the restored data not considered to require a license? Sorry for the questions, I'm not trying to bend the rules here, the reality is we have only 4 VM's total, they're all being effectively decommissioned and then restored (hopefully) as a Hyper-V VM, or worst case, just the guest data is going to be restored. In theory!

[Mildur]

Hi Alan,

Only “protecting a VM” consumes a license.
Restoring from your old VMWare backups does not consume any license. It is free.

Best,
Fabian