[V13] Appeal for VSA Licensing Consistency (Community Edition)

[FCU_JE]

I'm writing this quickly due to time constraints - apologies if my comments are unclear. I can try to clarify later.

The one thing that makes Veeam as a company stand out from the rest has always been that when I've asked the question "How do I restore from my old backups if I cease to be a Veeam customer in the future?", the answer has always been "You can install and use Community Edition to import old backup chains and restore workloads."

A Veeam competitor could come out tomorrow and kick Veeam's butt from every other angle - performance, security, cost - and it wouldn't matter if they don't make a similar promise to the above.

That's why I'm somewhat concerned that the V13 FAQ notes that the VSA/JeOS deployment will not allow CE licensing. I get it from a technical perspective - it's the same code, so CE users can continue to operate V13 under a Windows installation, but I can't shake the intuition that this is Veeam testing the waters on reducing (or even eliminating) their commitment to Community Edition going forward.

I'd really appreciate if someone from Veeam can comment and address my concerns here. The CE commitment (and the lack of competitors offering something similar) is the main reason maintaining my personal customer loyalty to Veeam. I'm certain I can't be the only one out here with similar thoughts.

[Gostev]

I'm afraid you're confusing two completely unrelated things here: the lack of Community Edition for VSA and the ability to import and restore backups without installing a paid license. While the former is correct, the latter functionality is still available with VSA.

[FCU_JE]

Fair - I may be confusing things. Not sure I'd go so far as to call them unrelated (licensing models are certainly related to licensing...).

It's welcome news that the VSA can be used to import/restore backups without a paid license - can you please expand on your comments here? Can the VSA be installed without product activation/a license key? Or are you alluding to NFR? Something else?

[Gostev]

Correct, VSA can be installed without a license.

[Didi7]

I must admit, allthough we are using our VUL license in the new VSA, I really miss the ability to use the VSA in very small environments, where the limit of 5 or 10 workloads, as is the case in the Community Edition under Windows, is effective.

I don't know, if this might change once or people are forced to use the Windows edition of VBR instead, but I would welcome if Veeam might change its decision and will allow to use VSA as a Community Edition in a future release.

I really think it's one of the wisest decision Veeam ever made to attract people and also I think this decision made many customers decide to switch to Veeam. Why it's not available in the VSA is beyond my knowledge.

Regards,
Didi7

[FCU_JE]

I really miss the ability to use the VSA in very small environments

I think this might need clarification for the rest of the class. VSA is very new, so there's not much to "miss" is there?

[Gostev]

@Didi7 is the earliest early adopter of VSA in production and it's going so well he already misses VSA everywhere else.

Didi7, unfortunately CE usage (and churn to CE in particular) is getting completely out of hand, so definitely don't expect any new features and capabilities added to CE. Which I guess is fair because adding more capabilities to CE means even less upsell opportunities than we have today, when we already keep hearing from everyone "I don't need a paid version, CE is good enough for me".

VSA is particularly special in this regard though. VSA is the first real "no brainer" upgrade reason for CE users just because minimal Veeam Essential license costs about same as a Windows Server license. That is before you add cost of labor for deployment, OS configuration and hardening, and on-going manual patching (easily a few times more than the license cost). Therefore you can probably see why realistically, VSA in particular will never be offered as CE... but on a positive note, VSA should help keep CE alive in its current form through improved monetization.

[Didi7]

The earliest early adopter of VSA

Does this make me a Veeam Legend automatically?

[Gostev]

I don't know about that (R&D does not manage this program) but I can promise you will be featured in our company's All Hands call this week

[Didi7]

Hmm, I don't know if that's an honor or something to better avoid, but I can promise you we never expected to early adopt VSA this last week, it was just released at the right time and it was pure coincidence, as the new productive Veeam infrastructure based on the latest v12.x running on Windows Server 2025 was already in place and then out of the sudden there was VSA *boom*

And VSA is awesome. What did we learn about Veeam's software? It just works

Even Direct NFS, which we might use on our last Nutanix cluster running VMware is supported within this Linux-based enviroment. What's not to like?

The funny thread "Server 2025 - high CPU and RAM" also made the decision very easy, allthough we already deciced to use Veeam Hardened Repositories anyway

[espressodriven]

@Gostev
First of all I am new to this forum, but I am already a long time happy user of Veeam B&R, thank you for your great work!

I am using the Community Edition in my homelab for years now, and it is really great that your product is usable for free in those environments! However reading this thread makes me concerned that Veeam might cancel CE entirely. I really understand that churn to the CE with small businesses is a problem, however I also think that many people discover Veeam through the free version and then pitch the usage of Veeam at bigger scale at their workplaces - leading to customer relationships Veeam might've never have had without providing the Community Edition.

If you really should consider to cancel the CE due to customer churn, I would like to propose that you maybe change it to be a "non commercial - no support" license instead of cancelling it completely. As outlined before I really think many people do also discover the abilities and the qualities of your software through personal usage - at least I know some people that discovered Veeam through this route and then got their employer to buy and implement Veeam in the business - just my 5 cents.

[Gostev]

Whatever ever happens with CE, I can assure you it will not have any impact on our "no commercial use - no support" (NFR) licenses. The business has no issues with NFR despite it providing access to full functionality and double the number of licenses comparing to CE, specifically because commercial use of NFR licenses is not allowed.

[Didi7]

Now, I am a little bit concerned! Customer churn? Really?

Is it because products are too expensive for some customers or what is the reason behind that or did I just misread something?

We all know there is competition but to me it seemed customers turned more to Veeam instead the other way round.

Since I had my first touchpoints with Veeam end of 2014 with Veeam B&R 7.x, I quickly upgraded to 8.x because of tape support and the product was widely used in many locations before somebody decided to switch to a competitor in 2018/2019. I never turned away from Veeam, I used a licensed product in our restore environment and Veeam was used for many migrations as well.

Now finally end of 2023 we switched back to Veeam and will do this in all environments including Cloud that's coming up next, when VSA has overtaken all OnPrem environments and I can promise you VSA is hungry :p

[Gostev]

Churn to CE, not to competition. So customers don't leave Veeam, they just stop paying for the licences because free CE "is good enough".

[espressodriven]

@Gostev
First of all thank you for your quick reply! It is great that Veeam is so customer centric that even their Chief Product Officer talks to people in the forum!

It is good to hear that NFR will stay, however this will still make it harder to obtain a license for the homelab for many people compared to CE, because to obtain a NFR license you have to be certified in some way or be a blogger.
Especially in SMBs it is not so common to have such certifications so there will still be a fairly high hurdle - especially for young IT professionals - to get their hands on your software and get excited about it to pitch it to their employers.

Maybe my experiences are not representative of the big mass, but I still think it would be good if the entry hurdle to experience your great software for free in the Homelab is low enough to get the young and rising stars of tomorrows IT excited about and experienced with your software. From my point of view and experience, the hurdles of NFR are currently too high for that.

[Gostev]

I'm not aware of any actual hurdles obtaining NFR. Any IT professional should be able to get it within minutes, the form doesn't even ask details about your certification as far as I can see. Let me know if your experience obtaining NFR has been different.

[espressodriven]

Thank you again for your reply, really appreciate it!

If I go to the website where one can apply for a NFR license (https://go.veeam.com/free-nfr-veeam-data-platform), the form asks for "You are" where one needs to specify a type of certification/partnership to apply.
Further down at that page it explains that one has to be one of the following to be eligible for a NFR license:

*Only for AWS Heroes, AWS Community Builders, Google Cloud Developer Advocates, Google Certified Professionals, Veeam Legends, Veeam Vanguards, vExpert, VCP, VCAP, VMUG Leader, VMCE™, Veeam User Group leader, CKA, Microsoft MVP, MCSE, MCSA, MCT, Cisco Champion, Nutanix NTC, Tanzu Vanguard and other certified professionals.

Or have I misunderstood something, and there is another NFR license?

[Gostev]

I see, for some reason it's missing Other in the drop down now, I'll ask the web team why it's not there.

Meanwhile you can pick anything as we don't ask any certification details and never verify them (nor have means to do this in principle). This is why "other" certifications have always been acceptable as well

[aj_potc]

So customers don't leave Veeam, they just stop paying for the licences because free CE "is good enough".

A different perspective:

It was the opposite for me. Veeam is a complex product that can't be learned without extensive hands-on experience. It was my experience with implementing your feature-rich Community Edition that led me to the decision to buy a license for my business. Simply stated, I find the price to be reasonable in exchange for the support you offer, and support is something any serious business needs.

Without the availability of the Community Edition, I'd almost certainly be using another backup solution.

If I were in your shoes, I’d take pride in strong CE adoption. The way you’ve structured things, anyone who needs support will have to pay for it. As for the rest of the CE users, unless you have evidence to the contrary, I’d assume the vast majority were never going to become Veeam customers anyway.

[Gostev]

Sadly the business does have strong evidence to the contrary as these are existing paying users who are churning to CE.

[Moopere]

@ Gostev,

Internally the bean counters will see this a certain way and might be tempted to think that if they just used a little bit more stick and a bit less carrot those CE customers would swing back to becoming licensed. The reality on the ground is that this is caused by a product being too highly priced and its a great 'wake up' opportunity if those smaller customers actually matter to the bottom line in a meaningful way.

Theres always a rebuttal to this: Our direct competitors are similarly priced, or, its already great value for money, or similar. All those things and more might be true, but don't dismiss this as a signal that CE customers are just cheaping out and can be converted if you just beat them a little harder. Again, reality is very likely that they will flip to cheaper (and possibly even less capable) alternatives as needs must.

Its a pricing signal and nothing else.

[Didi7]

Churn to CE, not to competition. So customers don't leave Veeam, they just stop paying for the licences because free CE "is good enough".

Maybe 10 workloads is too much and you have to switch to 5 workload max?

[Gostev]

Unless VSA fixes the situation, I think this change is quite likely actually. So far I was able to block this modification (CE is my baby anyway) but it's been getting progressively harder for me to defend CE with its current limits.

I do believe in VSA making a big difference to CE conversions to paid licences though. And at the same time it's my last hope, too. If it doesn't work out I guess I'll give up to the "bean counters".

[Pedro Ferreira]

Hi Gostev,

It's very sad to hear this and see people abusing this offer that helps us, the COMMUNITY, a lot.

Allow me to share some of your words that you sent in the Forum Digest email "December 30 - January 5, 2020", in your old section "THE WORD FROM GOSTEV" and that I still use today to internally counter this idea of ​​using CE in production.

I hope it "fits" for some people here too.

"Finally, I wanted to address the biggest misconception around leveraging our free offerings by service providers and consultants, who we often see opening free support cases. Looking back, there was not a week last year that I did not have to correct someone on Veeam forums, Reddit or elsewhere in these regards, after seeing yet another post with "my client" and "Community Edition" words combination. I also commonly saw folks creating a whole business model based on the Community Edition, without bothering to read Veeam EULA once! It is important to realize that our EULA has always restricted using our products to provide any services whatsoever to 3rd parties without a special license (see paragraphs 3.0 and 5.0). So, as soon as you - as a consultant or an MSP - deploy/manage/assist with our free offerings in your client environments, you violate our EULA. Keep in mind they are intended for be used directly by the end user in its own production environment, while any and all use cases involving services around 3rd party data require the special Rental license to be used."

I miss your guidance

PF

[ITP-Stan]

Good to read that NFR will be more flexible so we as IT professionals can still test the latest Veeam features in our homelab!
I've been using Veeam as a consultant for over 15 years, great product.

[Gostev]

Stan, just so there's no misunderstanding, what I described is the current state of NFR and not some future one

Our default NFRs (those any IT pro can request) included 20 licenses and provided full functionality access for as long as I remember myself. So way better than CE, no commercial usage rights but perfect for labs.

In addition, at least some years ago partner reps had simple means of manually creating a 100-licenses NFR keys for their managed Veeam partners.

[espressodriven]

@ITP-Stan
From what I read in the last messages on the last page in the below linked forum thread, you can only get such a NFR License once as general IT-Professional before you have to meet certain requirements such as being certified in some way or be a blogger that talks publicly about Veeam products.
https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-p ... ndex3.html

@Gostev
So there are also plans to make some cuts to those licenses?

I still truly believe that the IT professionals that are discovering and actively using your products in their own home labs are the ones that pitch it to their employers to buy it - because it is really great software, but you need some degree of experience with it to really know and appreciate all of it.
Yes, it is really sad that the free licenses are getting abused, and I understand that it needs countermeasures against it. But finally from my point of view it is important to ensure that your product remains widely known and high regarded, and having homelabbers (which are generally the most passionated IT professionals) and the general IT community aboard is a big part of that.

[Gostev]

Huh? Please point me where I said there are plans to cut any licenses, I wanted to edit that for added clarity.

[espressodriven]

@Gostev
I am sorry if I misunderstood you, I meant your previous post where you put emphasis on the fact that your statements are only concerning the current state of NFR.

Stan, just so there's no misunderstanding, what I described is the current state of NFR and not some future one

Again sorry if I misinterpreted that.

Can you confirm that general IT-Professionals are only eligible once for NFR as mentioned in the last posts of the following community thread: https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-p ... ndex3.html ?

Thank you for your time replying in this forum!

[Gostev]

No, we never had any limitations like that, you can keep renewing your NFR license every year. This is essential to enable you to keep using the latest Veeam version in your lab, which is the only point of providing an NFR license.