Yet another licensing query - Essentials and B&R

[ENSFCa]

Hi,

We are a Sixth Form College in the UK and, like all education here, are very short of cash.
A few years ago, on the back of both a prediction that a financially rough time was coming and the need to replace nearly 70% of our hardware due to age, we bought a fancy SAN and VMware system - two hosts running VMware Professional 5.0, two HP Lefthand nodes providing storage. We bought Veeam Backup and Replication Enterprise for the 4 CPU's too.
This all works well and is so good that we have reached capacity in some areas of this system (RAM mostly but disk space is getting there too).
So, we are expanding our server farm and creating three more hosts in our environment. Each of these are either second-use or EOL servers with a fair amount of RAM and local disk installed (i.e. cheap but OK) - but we can't afford to spend thousands on licensing - so we bought the VMware Essentials bundle so that we could point Veeam at them and back them up.
We had planned on using Veeam Essentials with the full limit of 6 CPU licenses, this was until our reseller presented us with the line 'You can't use Veeam Essentials because you already have full Veeam B&R licenses".
These devices are not clustered, have no vMotion and are essentially stand-alone systems. We'd love to have the full-blown kit, but we can't. So we'll live with it. As far as backup is concerned, we don't need the full B&R support or functionality, we're not backing up Exchange, we don't need web UI or instant recovery (AIR), we don't want to backup to the cloud, we can even live without the 24/7 support, - it's a different installation, for a different use, using differently licensed hypervisors on different hosts.

Please explain why I apparantly can't have the Veeam Essentials bundle?

BTW I tried both the UK regional office number (+44 (0)1189342982) where every option goes to voicemail and the Tech support UK number (+44-845-508-70-05) where the number appears to be unobtainable with a "...fault on the line, please try later.." message from the telephone provider (BT I assume).

Andy

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Andy,

Mixing different Veeam license types within the same environment is not allowed, however you can do that if you're deploying additional Veeam B&R server in the remote site/different datacenter (physical location).

BTW I tried both the UK regional office number (+44 (0)1189342982) where every option goes to voicemail and the Tech support UK number (+44-845-508-70-05) where the number appears to be unobtainable with a "...fault on the line, please try later.." message from the telephone provider (BT I assume).

I will send this information to our support team, thanks for the heads up.

Thank you!

[ENSFCa]

Thanks Vitaliy,
We have three server rooms each in different locations on the same site - does that count (sorry, we really don't want to have a bill 3 times larger than we expected!)?

Thanks for passing the phone thing on, that didn't help placate me at all...
ta

Andy

[chrisdearden]

Andy , which reseller did you speak with ? I'll let one of our channel managers know - I'm just a techie, not a licencing specialist but at least you might be able to get a definitive answer - though I can't promise if it will be the one you are looking for.

nb from a technical point of view you can't add additional licences of a different type ( std vs enterprise ) - you would need to use a different install of Veeam Backup to hold the essentials licences. This may not nessesarily be in the terms of EULA however.

[ENSFCa]

Chris,
We spoke to Phoenix Software (http://www.phoenixs.co.uk/) who are usually very accurate in these things.
I think a lot of this is interpretation of the technical and EULA rules which don't necessarily match up. That and enthusiasm on both my and the resellers part.
Either way I need to know what I can do as we've already bought parts for the project on the basis that we can use Veeam Essentials to back up the VM's. It may be that I won't be able to backup them if the cost is too high.
I am intending to have a separate server for the backup of these VM's anyway (it will be a VM itself) so it would be a different install on a different server - so no license clash on the same box / install - but as you rightly say, if Veeam have an EULA prohibiting that, then I'm stuffed.
FWIW In my opinion I don't see a reason why you shouldn't be allowed to have say 20 installs of Veeam Essentials up to the 6 blocks of licenses maximum (e.g. 120 cores)? - at the end of the day, if you can put up with the limitations, multiple servers/ installs and the lack of functions, why shouldn't you be able to back up cheaper?
I read elsewhere on the forum that the licensing model is being reviewed, perhaps us smaller, less well funded establishments (education, health etc.) should be considered too?

Thanks for your help, it's starting to look like we will need to buy more B&R Pro licenses - at nearly a grand a time I'm going to be reviewing my options again...
ta
Andy

[kjc3303]

Hello Andy,

Mixing different Veeam license types within the same environment is not allowed, however you can do that if you're deploying additional Veeam B&R server in the remote site/different datacenter (physical location).
I will send this information to our support team, thanks for the heads up.

Thank you!

I have a question about this can you deploy 2 x essentials licenses within the same environment?

Kev

[ENSFCa]

Kev,

I have a definitive answer from the Veeam Software Licensing team:

1) Customers who already purchased Backup and Replication as a standalone software can’t buy Essentials Bundle licenses.
2) If you have Enterprise licenses but want to buy some Standard licenses – you can do it. Yet, you won’t be able to monitor both license types from once console.
3) Also, if you are planning to use some of the new hosts as a target host (DR destination) – you don’t need to license it.
4) As educational sector, you are eligible for a 40% discount.

Have a nice day,

Ksenia Mironiuk
Veeam Software

Additionally I discussed all those other options too - No Kev, you cannot have more than 6 licenses with Essentials per organisation. I think it's a bit mad, but that's their way of starting you off with backup and then once you've got 6 forcing you to buy 'big boy's' licenses.
Personally I'd rather not have 'feed-in' licenses and just buy as many licenses as I want based solely on the functionality they provide - otherwise, as in our case, we'd buy full licenses and only use 10% of the functions included...
Andy

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Kev,

I have a question about this can you deploy 2 x essentials licenses within the same environment?

No, deploying 2 x essentials licenses in the same environment is not allowed.

Thanks!

[kjc3303]

Thanks for the reply's guys.

Kev

[kjc3303]

Just a thought as per comments above I assume I can have 2 x Essentials licenses if they are at different Data Center Prod and DR?
If so can I replicate vm's across licenses?

Thanks

Kev

[Vitaliy S.]

Just a thought as per comments above I assume I can have 2 x Essentials licenses if they are at different Data Center Prod and DR?

Correct.

If so can I replicate vm's across licenses?

Yes, you can, as licences are not required for replication targets.

[kjc3303]

Perfect thanks

Kev