This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Licensed Objects

Veeam licenses Veeam Backup & Replication in two ways: per-instance and per-socket.

Veeam Backup & Replication can be licensed by the number of instances. Instances are units (or tokens) that you can use to protect your virtual, physical or cloud-based workloads. You must obtain a license with the total number of instances for workloads that you plan to protect in Veeam Backup & Replication.

Workloads that have been processed in the past 31 days are considered protected. Every protected workload consumes instances from the license scope. The number of instances that a workload requires depends on the workload type and product edition. For details, see Veeam Licensing Policy.

This licensing model allows you to obtain a license with a certain number of instances without knowing in advance what types of workloads you plan to protect. When a need arises, you can revoke instances from a protected workload, and reuse them to protect other workloads regardless of the workload type.

Mind the following:

VM templates are regarded as protected VMs and consume license instances.
VMs processed with backup copy and tape jobs are not regarded as protected VMs and do not consume license instances. These types of jobs provide an additional protection level for VMs that are already protected with backup jobs.
VMs processed by snapshot-only jobs are regarded as protected VMs and consume license instances. Veeam Backup & Replication will revoke instances from these VMs if you re-add a storage array to the backup infrastructure.

Veeam Backup & Replication keeps track of instances consumed by protected workloads. If the number of consumed instances exceeds the license limit, Veeam Backup & Replication displays a warning when you open the Veeam Backup & Replication console. For more information, see Exceeding License Limit.

Per-Socket Licensing

With the per-socket licensing model, Veeam Backup & Replication is licensed by the number of CPU sockets on protected hosts. A license is required for every occupied motherboard socket as reported by the hypervisor API.

License is required only for source hosts — hosts on which VMs that you back up or replicate reside. Target hosts (for replication and migration jobs) do not need to be licensed.

Licensed Objects Note:

If you use a per-socket license that was obtained for an earlier version of Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Software adds up to 6 instances free of charge to your license scope. You can use these instances to protect any type of supported workloads except VMware and Hyper-V VMs — they are covered by the licensed CPU sockets on virtualization hosts.

If the number of licensed sockets is less than 6, you can use the number of instances that equals the number of licensed sockets. For example, if the number of licensed sockets is 5, you can use 5 instances. If the number of licensed sockets is 100, you can use 6 instances.

For more information on licensing, see Veeam Licensing Policy.