Licensing Veeam V11: What’s new and what’s not

Chris Spencer

We know you’re all excited for the many benefits of Veeam Backup & Replication v11, including the many features and improvements and how this platform continues to expand to protect even more of your critical workloads. The benefits of this V11 release include bulletproof ransomware protection, increased security, Continuous Data Protection (CDP), greater cloud portability and cloud-native backup options in AWS and Microsoft Azure and much, much more. The list is truly impressive and a testament to our R&D team, listening to your feedback and responding with continued innovation that is Simple, Flexible and Reliable.

I’m expecting that many who are reading this blog are wondering what’s next in the world of licensing. We did introduce some pretty radical changes back in 2019, bringing the portable Veeam Universal License (VUL) and have spent nearly two years since solidifying this as the preferred license option including all of the latest capabilities of Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE, across all workloads and all environments. Thank you for standing by us through this transformational journey. We’re pleased to say that VUL has been received very well and praised by Gartner in the 2020 Backup Magic Quadrant. I’m also pleased to say that the big news for V11 is that there’s, wait for it… NO NEWS. No major changes. No license policy changes. No license file changes. Well actually, there is some news, but it’s all good news, so let’s jump in.

What do you need to know for V11?

The good news for V11 is that most of you will not need to get a new license file. This was required with all previous major releases, but the new license file format introduced in V10 no longer requires this. So, you can install or upgrade to V11 with your existing license file. And if you’re upgrading to V11 from earlier versions, the setup program will offer you to download the license file automatically.

VUL is more fully featured than ever

VUL continues to receive all of the available features within Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Availability Suite, with a portable licensing option for use on-premises, in the public cloud, and across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This includes protection for all of the following workloads:

There are also some NEW V11 features that require either VUL or the Enterprise Plus edition of socket-based licensing:

Protect Cloud-Native AWS and Azure

Cloud is a huge focus at Veeam and has been for quite some time now. Whether you’re looking to move backups to lower cost, infinite-capacity cloud object storage, archive your longest-term backups to cold storage options or establish a DR to cloud plan, Veeam can help. The latest NEW capabilities inside the VUL license include the ability to manage backup and recovery of your cloud-native workloads residing on AWS, with Veeam Backup for AWS v3, and now on Microsoft Azure, with the NEW Veeam Backup for Microsoft Azure v2. These integrations enable protection of AWS EC2 instances, RDS and more, which has been available in V10 since July and the most recent capabilities include the integration for Microsoft Azure v2. Yes, now you can protect your cloud-native AWS and Azure workloads with VUL too! Want to try protecting your cloud-native workloads today?

Double the NAS, double the fun!

One more added bonus, which will come as a delight to many NAS users. After reviewing typical discount rates of our 2020 NAS backup sales, we’re making a change to VUL-based NAS backup licensing that results in considerable savings. After you upgrade to V11, each VUL license will immediately start protecting 500GB of NAS unstructured data instead of 250GB — so twice as much data with the same number of licenses. This takes the NAS backup to the most affordable price point ever. What about the change in Veeam Backup & Replication 10a, where we made the first 250GB in each share free to protect? That still exists, but it also stretches to 500GB too, allowing you to back up your most important files to a different format at no extra costs from servers already protected with image-level backups.

Veeam CDP. At. No. Extra. Cost.

You’ve heard about CDP being one of the most anticipated features for a while now. You’ve probably looked at other CDP solutions for your disaster recovery strategy. We know that these solutions have been incredibly costly, forcing many customers to decide whether to use backup or CDP, but priced at such a premium that affording both isn’t a reality. We’re happy to say that CDP is included for customers at no additional cost! Nothing else to buy. No additional license needs. No having to choose either backup or CDP. Veeam gives you both, in the product that over 400,000 active customers already have. With options for either virtual or physical proxy, reliable asynchronous replication and no physical distance limits, CDP from Veeam is a great solution for your Tier 1 workload DR strategy.

DR orchestration

While on the topic of DR, the CDP capabilities of Veeam Backup & Replication are extended to Veeam ONE for monitoring, as well as Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator for automating your site recovery and testing strategy. What is Veeam DR Orchestrator, you ask? To capture the benefits that CDP bring for DR purposes, we’ve rebranded the trusted Veeam Availability Orchestrator to be called Veeam Disaster Recovery Orchestrator at this v4 release. All of the same features and functionality still exists, it’s just a name change. In the v4 release of this product, we accommodate the ability to orchestrate CDP replicas as well, rounding out a complete set of DR features: protection, monitoring and orchestration. The DR Orchestrator v4 is licensed with the DR Pack, which is purchased in packs of 10 and matches the number of VUL licenses in your environment.

VUL: It’s not just subscription

Lastly, I’d like to reiterate one change that was made in July 2020 that may be unknown, yet critical for so many customers. While the flexible, portable VUL license was initially launched in 2019 as being subscription only, we listened to your feedback and soon realized that certain customers can only transact perpetually for various budgetary reasons. Therefore, we want to send a reminder that VUL can be transacted either via subscription or perpetually. You choose the option for your environment. VUL perpetual offers the same features, functionality and portability, competitively priced in a perpetual CapEx model with annual ongoing maintenance and support structure that many are already familiar with.

Summary

V11 is action packed! Helping you protect all of your workloads across your hybrid and multi-cloud environments against ransomware, disasters all while doing so in a reliable fashion. The VUL license is the best way to be prepared for YOUR Digital Transformation today and tomorrow. Upgrade to V11 for the latest and greatest data protection capabilities for your cloud, virtual and physical needs.

Above we mentioned the inclusion of Azure-native backup and recovery in V11 (AWS-native came in V10). If you’re a current Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam Availability Suite or Veeam Backup Essentials customer, we’re giving you 25 VUL FREE to natively protect your AWS or Azure workloads. What’s more, we’re even throwing in $250 in cloud credit of your choice to sweeten the offer. Check out all the offer details here and register to start natively protecting AWS and Azure workloads FREE!

Not yet using the VUL license? You’re in luck: you already have some free VUL licenses at your disposal for which to kick the tires. Contact renewals with questions on how to get the most capability out of your V11 experience.

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