VSPC: Manage licenses for VBR
From SP console version 8.1, it is now fully supported and user-friendly for the resellers to manage the licenses of their VBR customers.
Note: Licenses are required for the install and management of Veeam Backup & Replication. Veeam Backup Agent customers or Veeam Backup for M365 users don't need to install licenses, this is automatically done by the SP console.
Important: Veeam strongly recommends that each VBR customer should get their own individual licenses! In other words, licenses should NOT be reused for multiple customers. More information HERE.
Good to know: installing or replacing licenses do NOT interfere with the daily operation of your existing VBR installation. If you need to replace or change your license, you can do so even during a backup operation. For new VBR installations, you NEED to use the rental license, otherwise important features (e.g. backup to the cloud) will not work.
This is how you can assign and download a license to use with your installations.
Click Configuration at the top right hand corner.
Click Plugin Library > VCSP Pulse Portal.
You are now taken to the VCSP pulse plugin.
On the Companies tab, in case you see that you have Unmapped companies, highlight all of them, then click + Create Company and choose In VCSP Pulse.
Toggle the Company Creation in VCSP Pulse to ON to auto-create all companies in VCSP pulse. This will enable the correct license reporting.
Create, assign and download license keys
Under the License keys tab, click +New license
In the new wizard, choose the product for which you need the license to.
Info: for Veeam Agents, you won't need to assign licenses if you install them through the SP console. The license is automatically installed during the installation process.
Important: do NOT modify the Expiration date! If you do, your license will not auto-update at the end of the annual auto-update period.
Choose the Workloads - these are the things that you will backup. E.g. virtual machines, public cloud machines, workstations.
You can add multiple workload types.
How many workloads? Workload amount in a license must cover your current usage, and cannot exceed 20% of your current usage. E.g. if you have 10 VMs to protect, you can create a license with VM numbers between 10 (your current usage) and 12 (current usage + 20%). Do NOT exceed the 20%!
Review your choices and finish the wizard.
Assign the license to a company by highlighting it, and clicking License Actions > Assign.
After the license was assigned to the company, you will be able to download it through the License Actions menu or install it in the SP console.
License installation
There are multiple ways to use your newly created license.
1. You can manually install the license file on the VBR installation as it's described here.
2. In case your Customer is responsible to install their own VBR, you will need to download the license file and provide the file itself to them. After that, they can install it on their already existing VBR installation or use the file during the installation.
3. The recommended method is to install the license through the SP console for already existing installations that appear in the SP console and use the license during the installations of new VBR servers.
To use the 3rd option, click on Configuration and go to Quota & License Usage
Click Veeam Backup & Replication to list the license configurations of your VBR installations.
Highlight the installation where you'd like to use your new license.
Click Install > From VCSP Pulse
Choose the product version.
Highlight the listed license and click Install.
Note: in case you see no licenses listed, it means that you need to assign a license for that Company inside the VCSP Pulse plugin. (See above, how.)
License Auto-Update
Rental licenses have a validity period of one year. They automatically renew when the contract of your SP is automatically renewed every year. For this to actually happen, you need to make sure of the following:
1. Do NOT change the Expiration date of your created licenses in VCSP Pulse.
2. Make sure that all your VBR installs have a working connection to our SP console. This is done by the management agent. In case your installation is disconnected, please restart the Veeam Management Agent service locally on the VBR installation.
3. Toggle the License Auto Update button.
Good to know about licensing...
How many workloads should go into one license?
Billing from the SP side is done based on actually used workloads and NOT dependent on how many workloads exist in the installed license. License quotas exist to give the reseller a means to better control resource consumption of the customer. It is NOT the basis of our billing. Because of this, you are free to add more workloads into the license than what will be used by the customer, however this number must not exceed 20% of the actual usage. E.g. the customer wants to protect 2 VMs, but you know that they will add a 3rd one in a few months. You can add 3 VMs as workloads in the license, so you don't need to edit the license later on and your customer will not exceed license consumption when they do actually add protection for the 3rd VM.
Expired licenses
In case your VBR license is expired, you have a 60-day grace period to renew it. Installing a new license will not interfere with daily operations e.g. backup jobs.
Exceeded licenses
In case your VBR is backing up more VMs than it is specified in the installed license, you need to expand the license in VCSP Pulse plugin by editing the license and then reinstall it on the given VBR. (See above.)
More information on expired and exceeded licenses here.
Enterprise vs. Enterprise Plus vs. Standard
In case you want to use Enterprise or Enterprise Plus features for some of your protected VMs, you need to install such a license. E.g. You have 10 protected VMs, and would like to use Sure Backup (an Enterprise feature) for only 3 of them. You need to install the Enterprise license for ALL 10 VMs. For one VBR installations you can only use 1 type of license either ENT or ENT+ or STD.
More about different features here.
New workloads
For the first month when a VM is being backed up, it is not billed. This is why you will see under the License menu numbers like Points 50 (10 used + 5 new). This means, your license covers 50 points (5 VMs) of which 10 points are used (2 VMs) and 5 points are new meaning 1 VM which has been backed up for less then 30 days.
Cloud backup copies
Cloud backup copies do not consume licenses. (As opposed to individual cloud backups, which do.)
VMs without restore points
VMs without restore points do not consume licenses.
More information about new workloads, cloud copies and VMs without restore points here.
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