Licensing

To use the Veeam Plug-in functionality, you must have a valid Veeam Backup & Replication license. Licenses are installed and managed on the Veeam Backup & Replication server that is connected to the Veeam Plug-in server. If the license is not valid or out of resources, Veeam Plug-in backup jobs fail.

This guide provides information only on specifics of Veeam licenses for Veeam Plug-ins. For terminology and general information about Veeam Licensing, see Veeam Licensing Policy.

Licensed Objects

A Microsoft SQL Server machine with Veeam Plug-in is assumed protected if it has been processed by a Veeam Plug-in backup job in the last 31 days.

If you use any instance-based (Veeam Universal Licensing) license in Veeam Backup & Replication, you do not need to install any additional licenses. A protected server with Veeam Plug-in consumes one instance unit from the license. Servers processed by backup copy jobs are not regarded as protected machines, these types of jobs provide an additional protection level for machines that are already protected with Veeam Plug-in backup jobs.

A machine protected by both Veeam Plug-in and Veeam Backup & Replication will consume a license only once. For example, you have Microsoft SQL Server that you back up using Veeam Plug-in. You also back up this server using image-level backup functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication. In this case, only one license will be consumed.

Note

[For Perpetual per-socket licenses] If you are using a legacy perpetual per-socket license, a license is required for each hypervisor CPU socket occupied by protected servers.

A socket is consumed from the license only if the hypervisor where protected servers reside is added to the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure. If the hypervisor is not added to the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, an instance unit will be consumed from the license. To learn how to add a hypervisor to the Veeam Backup & Replication infrastructure, see the Virtualization Servers and Hosts section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

Important

The license is required for all cluster nodes, even if Veeam Plug-in is installed only on one of the nodes.

Supported License Types

You can use Veeam Plug-ins with the following license types and packages. Note that this guide contains information on specifics of Veeam license packages only for Veeam Plug-ins. For the full list of license packages, see Pricing and Packaging.

For Veeam Universal license:

You can use Veeam Plug-ins with all license packages (Veeam Backup Essentials, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Availability Suite).

Note that if you use the Rental license type, functionality of Veeam Plug-ins is supported only for the Enterprise Plus edition of Veeam Backup & Replication.

For Socket license:

Functionality of Veeam Plug-ins is supported only for the Enterprise Plus edition of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Obtaining and Managing Licenses

To learn how to install a license and monitor licensed objects, see the Licensing section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.