The SP must obtain a license for the total number of VMs that all tenants working with this SP plan to back up and/or replicate. Backed up and replicated VMs are tracked separately. If a tenant processes the same VM with a backup job and a replication job, this VM is considered as 2 VMs: 1 backed up VM and 1 replicated VM.
The Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license is consumed only by active VMs. An active VM is a VM that has at least one restore point created by a tenant in the past 31 days. The number of restore points created by tenants or the number of jobs that process VMs does not consume the license. For example, if a tenant processes the same VM with several backup jobs, this VM is considered as 1 active VM.
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Starting from version 9.5 Update 3, if a tenant has a rental license installed on the tenant backup server, Veeam Backup & Replication does not consider tenant VMs processed by backup and/or backup copy jobs as active VMs. Instead, Veeam Backup & Replication treats such VMs as rental VMs. In contrast to active VMs, rental VMs consume the tenant license and do not consume the SP license. To learn more, see Rental Machines Licensing. |
The SP can obtain a license for the necessary Veeam Cloud Connect functionality: Veeam Cloud Connect Backup, Veeam Cloud Connect Replication, or both. For example, if the SP plans to provide Disaster Recovery as a Service to tenants, he or she can obtain a license for Veeam Cloud Connect Replication only. In this case, the SP license will count replicated VMs and will not contain a backed up VMs counter. Tenants will be able to create VM replicas on the cloud host and will not be able to create backups on the cloud repository.
Starting from version 9.5 Update 2, Veeam Backup & Replication also tracks the number of servers and/or workstations for which tenants create Veeam Agent backups in a cloud repository. If the SP plans to expose a cloud repository for Veeam Agent backups, it should obtain a license for the total number of servers and/or workstations that all tenants working with this SP plan to back up. To learn more, see Support for Veeam Agents.
To provide more flexibility and introduce a trial period for tenant VM processing, Veeam Backup & Replication offers the concept of New VMs. New VMs are VMs that were processed for the first time within the current calendar month.
New VMs are counted separately from active VMs and do not consume the license until the beginning of the new month. On the first day of the new month, the number of new VMs is added to the number of active VMs and the new VMs counter in the license resets. New VMs are not included in a license usage report.
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Consider the following:
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License Expiration
The Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license period is set in accordance with the chosen licensing program.
To ensure a smooth license update procedure, Veeam Backup & Replication offers to the SP a 60-day grace period after the license expires. Upon license expiration, the SP can process all tenants' VMs for the duration of the grace period.
During the grace period, Veeam Backup & Replication will show a warning that the SP needs to submit a license usage report and update the license.
- During the first month of a grace period, a message box is displayed once a week when the Veeam Backup & Replication console opens.
- During the second month, a message box is displayed each time the Veeam Backup & Replication console opens.
After the grace period is over, tenants' VMs are no longer processed. To continue using Veeam Backup & Replication, the SP must purchase a new license.
The grace period is also valid for situations when the number of VMs processed by the SP exceeds the total number of licensed VMs. To learn more, see Exceeding License Limit.
The total number of active VMs must not exceed the total number of VMs in the license. Depending on the number of active VMs, the Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license can be in one of the following states:
- Normal: the total number of active VMs does not exceed the total number of VMs in the license. Tenants can freely process existing and newly added VMs: back up and copy VMs to the cloud repository and replicate VMs to cloud hosts.
- Grace: after the total number of active VMs exceeds the total number of VMs in the license, the license is put to the Grace state. Tenants can still process existing and newly added VMs regardless the number of VMs in the license. VMs that exceed the license limit are tracked separately for future FIFO (First In First Out) processing. If free license slots appear due to older VMs no longer being protected, VMs from the FIFO list occupy free license slots on the FIFO basis.
The Grace state is valid for 60 days. After the 60-days period expires, the license is put to the Post grace state.
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New VMs do not consume the license. If these VMs exceed the license limit, Veeam Backup & Replication does not start the grace period immediately. The grace period is started on the next month after the number of new VMs has been added to the number of active VMs. |
- Post grace: the total number of active VMs exceeds the total number of VMs in the license and the grace period has expired. Tenants can back up, copy and replicate only those VMs that have already been backed up, copied and replicated while the license was in the Normal state. VMs that exceed the license limit are no longer processed.
The license in the Post grace state can get to the Normal state if the SP obtains and installs a license for a greater number of VMs.
- Recovery: During the Grace period, the SP may return to the license limits. This can happen if the number of active VMs reduces. In this situation, the license is put to the Recovery state. Tenants can back up and copy VMs to the cloud repository and replicate VMs to cloud. To learn more, see Reducing Number of Licensed VMs.
The Recovery state is valid for 1 day. After that, Veeam Backup & Replication changes the license state:
- If the number of active VMs remains within the license limits during 1 day, the license is put back to the Normal state.
- If the number of active VMs exceeds the number VMs in the license at any time during 1 day, the license is returned to the Grace state. Veeam Backup & Replication does not start the Grace period anew: it resumes the earlier Grace period. For example, the license was first put to the Grace state on June 10. On June 13 the number of active VMs reduced and the license was put to the Recovery state. On June 14 the number of active VMs was again exceeded and the license is returned to the Grace state. The license will be in the Grace state till August 10. After that, the license will be put to the Post grace state.
Veeam Backup & Replication checks the license and, if necessary, changes the license state in the following cases:
- When any tenant starts a backup, backup copy or replication job
- After the SP deletes the tenant account
- After the SP resets the VM count for the tenant
The state of the license impacts only backup, backup copy and replication jobs. Tenants can perform restore from the cloud repository, copy files to the cloud repository and perform failover tasks regardless of the license state.
