Frequently Asked Questions

As the market increasingly shifts more toward multi-cloud and hybrid environments, based on the foundation of portability, subscription-type licensing is becoming an expectation. Veeam has made the commitment to customers to offer more and more products via a portable license model. The benefits of this model for customers include:

• Universal portability: Licenses can be used interchangeably across multiple Veeam products and workloads.
• Simplified use: Easier license ordering, management and merging capabilities.
• Increased value: More features at a lower price per workload. Buy only what you need without the risk of locking into specific workload licenses.
• Price predictability: Purchase multi-year contracts to lock in pricing by paying upfront or paying as you go.
• Pay for use: Buy only what you need today and increase or decrease what you buy based on your need at the time of renewal.
• No lock-in: If you're not satisfied, you can choose not to renew your subscription.
• Support included: Get 24.7.365 production support for the entire term of your license at no extra cost (excluding Veeam Backup Starter, which includes basic support).

VUL is a subscription model that can be used universally, providing users with an added element of portability, making the jump to cloud and hybrid environments even easier without any additional cloud fees.

VUL licenses are sold for a defined duration, from one- to five-year paid upfront terms or paid annually for a three-year term. These licenses can be used across a variety of Veeam products and workload types interchangeably. This licensing offers all the benefits of a pay-as-you-go license, such as the ability to start small without lock-in, and the ability to pay for what you consume using a cloud-friendly OpEx budgeting model.

But there are many more benefits to VUL that separates it from traditional subscriptions. You no longer have to purchase licenses by individual product or restricted to a specific workload type. This new model makes a variety of products and features more readily available to more users. That’s right: Subscription licenses can be used across multiple products and workloads, whether they be virtual, physical or in the cloud, so you aren’t tied to a license type or product that you don’t need. We call that portability!

Use what you want, when you need it. License portability also simplifies ordering and license management, which reduces the complexity of managing various SKUs by product or workload type.

VUL is a more simplified, portable and easy-to-use configuration of its predecessor, Veeam Instance License (VIL). VUL is sold as a pool of licenses in a single, fully-featured version with no confusing instance weighting calculations. With VUL, one license protects one workload. Effective Oct. 1, 2019, VUL is Veeam’s subscription license and existing subscription customers will be upgraded to VUL at the installation of v10 of Veeam’s products.

A workload can be a VM, physical server, enterprise application, cloud VM or a file share. With VUL, customers can use the licenses to protect any workload they need, since the licenses are portable. Customers purchase licenses, sold in minimum quantities of 10 licenses, and can use those licenses to protect various workloads.

The number of licenses generally needed equates to the number of workloads you are looking to protect. Most workloads require just one license instance. An exception is when you’re protecting workstations or endpoints, where one license will protect three workstations. One VUL license will also protect 250 GB of NAS file capacity, or four licenses per TB. The best way to see how many licenses you need is with our VUL configurator. Select the product, enter your workloads and your term of your choice.

VUL licenses are sold in minimum quantities of 10 licenses. If the minimum purchase requirement of 10 licenses is a barrier, we suggest trying Veeam Backup & Replication™ Community Edition, which protects 10 workloads for free.

VUL is used to protect many workloads, and some workloads require VUL. So, what do you need to purchase?

Commercial and Enterprise

• Veeam Availability Suite™ VUL: Backup and monitoring of cloud, virtual and physical workloads
• Veeam Backup & Replication VUL: Backup of cloud, virtual and physical workloads

Small-to-Medium sized business

• Veeam Backup Essentials VUL: Backup and monitoring of cloud, virtual and physical workloads, limited to 50 workloads
• Veeam Backup Starter VUL: Backup of cloud, virtual and physical workloads, limited to 20 workloads with basic customer support only

You purchase VUL licenses in minimum quantities of 10 licenses. With one- to five-year options, you can choose the term and payment schedule that best meets your needs. Pay upfront or pay annually; the annual option is available for three-year terms only. When the license expires, you must renew the license to continue using the subscription. All licenses include 24.7.365 production support, except Veeam Backup Starter, which just includes basic support.

VUL can be used for a variety of things, and that list is growing. Effectively, these licenses can be used for most workload types, including VMs and cloud-based VMs, physical servers and workstations, and enterprise application plugins. The list below shows the type of workloads that available today:

• VMs (VMware vSphere, Hyper-V and Nutanix AHV): Veeam Backup & Replication
• Physical servers and workstations: Veeam Agents for Microsoft Windows and Linux
• Cloud-native workloads: Veeam Backup for AWS, Veeam Agents for Microsoft Windows and Linux
• Enterprise application support (Oracle RMAN and SAP HANA): Veeam Backup & Replication enterprise plug-in or Veeam Agents for Microsoft Windows and Linux
• NAS file shares: Veeam Backup & Replication
• Monitoring: Veeam ONE™, sold as part of Veeam Availability Suite or Veeam Backup Essentials

At this time, the following products are still sold using individual Subscription licenses instead of portable Subscription licenses:

• Veeam Agents for IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris (Coming to VUL in 2020)
• Veeam Management Pack™ (MP) for System Center
• Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365
• Veeam Availability Orchestrator

No, these products are not available with per-socket licenses.

If you are looking to use your existing VUL licenses for Veeam Backup for AWS, contact sales or open a licensing support ticket for help.

Yes, if centrally managed with one license key, VUL license instances are not limited to a single environment or location and can be utilized where needed.

Customers can have a centrally managed environment that uses both VUL and socket licenses. However, not all products can be combined (a full list of mergeable VUL and socket products can be found here). For example, if you protect VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V VMs with perpetual per-socket licenses, you must protect all vSphere and Hyper-V VMs with sockets in that environment. VUL licenses can still be used for any other non-VM workload type.

Important note: When merging per-socket and VUL licenses, be aware that the socket license dictates the edition and capability of the entire merged environment. For example: If you merge Veeam Availability Suite Enterprise edition sockets with Veeam Availability Suite VUL (i.e., the Enterprise Plus capability), the environment will be set to the Enterprise edition feature set. In order to get full Enterprise Plus edition capabilities, users need to either a) migrate per-socket licenses to VUL licenses or b) upgrade per-socket licenses to the preferred edition (likely Enterprise Plus Edition).

If a customer wants to have a centrally managed environment, they may need to merge license files. The requirement is that maintenance is current for both the per-socket and VUL components. Contact Veeam support for assistance with any issues.

Veeam Availability Suite can merge socket and universal licenses into one centrally managed environment.

Veeam Backup & Replication can also merge socket and universal licenses into one centrally managed environment.

Veeam Backup Essentials, however, cannot merge per-socket and universal licenses, but you still have two options:

• Veeam Backup Essentials sockets can be merged with Veeam Availability Suite VUL.
• Veeam Backup Essentials sockets and universal licenses can be upgraded to Veeam Availability Suite for centralized management and license mergeability. 

This process will be handled in product or inside “My Account” on the customer portal. Customers upgrading to version 10 will have their license file updated immediately. This includes customers who have some Perpetual licenses and some Agent Server or workstation licenses.

Click on the “Get New Licenses” button in “My Account”. Select the products you want to upgrade, click download and you’re done.

Purchase Veeam Availability Suite VUL. Veeam Availability Suite offers both the data protection of Veeam Backup & Replication for virtual, physical and cloud workloads as well as the monitoring and analytics capabilities of Veeam ONE in one suite. Veeam Agents for Microsoft Windows and Linux are now a module within Veeam Backup & Replication.

For example, VUL licenses will allow the protection and monitoring of five VMs and five server agents using 10 total licenses. Customers are not charged additional licenses for monitoring.

Customers can migrate from per-socket licenses to VUL by purchasing a promotional migration SKU. This SKU can be used for existing customers with per-socket licenses who are looking to convert to Subscription VUL licenses. Purchasing this SKU extends support on the Perpetual license for one or two years and converts the contract from Perpetual to Subscription licenses. Any added workloads required by the customer beyond the migration limit must be purchased using VUL subscription pricing. All migrated per-socket licenses must be destroyed by the end user. Customers can purchase a one- or two-year upfront migration SKU. After this period, all migrated licenses will be renewed using VUL license pricing. Any product that is migrated from per-socket (i.e., Perpetual license) to VUL (i.e., Subscription license) must be done for the full number of sockets in the customer’s total environment, regardless of individual contracts for that product.

Interested in more details? Contact your preferred reseller or Veeam sales representative for more information.

No, there is no requirement to move to the VUL license model. Per-socket perpetual licensing is still an option for customers who need to protect VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V workloads on-premises. To protect certain workloads such as NAS file shares, cloud workloads and Veeam Agent servers or workstations, a VUL license is required.

We give Veeam Availability Suite, Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Essentials per-socket customers one VUL license for each socket license. You can try up to six licenses at no cost. These licenses allow you to try out the capabilities for protecting Veeam Agents for Microsoft Windows and Linux, Enterprise Plug-ins for Oracle RMAN and SAP HANA, cloud workloads, NAS file shares and more with no strings attached. These licenses appear in the product as shown below and do not expire.

To continue using your Veeam products with a VUL subscription, simply renew your VUL licenses prior to the expiration of your current term. For assistance with a quote, please contact our team here.