01The short version#
Veeam sells most of its software on one portable licence, the Veeam Universal License (VUL). You buy a number of instances, and each protected workload uses up a published share of them: one per VM or server, one per three workstations, one per 500 GB of file share data. The edition you buy (Foundation, Advanced or Premium) decides which features those instances unlock. Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Kubernetes are licensed separately.
The same VUL covers VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox and other VMs, physical servers, cloud VMs, workstations and NAS. You can move instances between workload types without buying a new SKU.
A workload counts as protected, and uses an instance, if Veeam created at least one restore point for it in the past 31 days. Retire a server and its instance frees up a month later.
Foundation is backup and recovery. Advanced adds Veeam ONE monitoring and threat analytics. Premium adds Recovery Orchestrator. Essentials is the small-business package, capped at 50 instances.
Community Edition protects up to 10 workloads with no licence key and no paid support. Above that, Veeam points small businesses to Data Platform Essentials.
New perpetual per-socket licences are no longer sold. Sockets cover only vSphere and Hyper-V VMs. Moving to VUL uses Migration SKUs that must cover every socket on the contract.
XcellHost quotes Veeam licences in rupees. Our own services have list prices: backup operations from ₹999 per workload a month and a Mumbai DR target from ₹49,999 a month, indicative and excl. 18% GST.
Before you ask for a quote, list every VM, physical server, workstation, NAS share (with its size in GB), Entra ID user count, Microsoft 365 user count and Kubernetes worker node. Tool 1 in this guide turns that list into instances in under a minute.
02The Veeam product line-up in the v13 era#
Veeam Data Platform 13.1 was announced on 29 July 2026 and supports 14 hypervisors. The table lists the products a buyer usually meets on a quote and the licence unit each one uses.
| Product | What it does | Licence unit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veeam Data Platform (Foundation · Advanced · Premium) | Backup & Replication plus, by edition, Veeam ONE and Recovery Orchestrator | VUL instances, packs of 10 | The main product. Upgrades between editions are available for all VULs |
| Veeam Data Platform Essentials | The same platform packaged for small businesses | VUL instances, packs of 5, maximum 50 | Cannot be merged above 50. Larger estates need an upgrade SKU |
| Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition | Free backup for small estates | Up to 10 workloads | No key needed. Best-effort community support only |
| Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (self-hosted) | Backs up Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams to storage you run | Per protected user | Minimum 10 users on paid offerings |
| Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 (SaaS) | Veeam runs the backup infrastructure and storage for you | Per user, Foundation / Advanced / Premium plans | Unlimited backup storage included. Entra ID protection included in Advanced and Premium |
| Veeam Data Cloud for Entra ID, Salesforce, Azure | SaaS backup for those platforms | Per Entra ID member user · per Salesforce user · per TB (Azure) | Minimum 10 users for Entra ID and Salesforce |
| Veeam Data Cloud Vault | Immutable cloud storage for Veeam backups | Per TB per month (Archive, Foundation, Advanced) | Storage, API calls and egress included. India regions available (section 09) |
| Veeam Kasten | Kubernetes backup and mobility | Per worker node | Kasten Free covers up to 5 nodes |
| Veeam Backup for AWS / Azure / Google Cloud | Native backup of cloud VMs and services | VUL, packs of 10 | Free editions cover up to 10 EC2 instances or 10 Azure VMs |
| Veeam ONE (standalone) | Monitoring and reporting | Socket or instance | No longer sold new Now comes inside Advanced and Premium |
| Veeam Recovery Orchestrator (standalone) | Orchestrated, tested DR plans | Packs of 10 orchestrated instances | Needs Veeam ONE and must be merged with a Data Platform licence |
All Veeam products and services · Resilience Operations · Private Cloud DR target · VMware migration · Commvault
03The Veeam Universal License, explained#
A VUL is a pool of instances. The pool is not tied to a hypervisor, a host or a socket, so the same 50 instances can protect 50 VMs this year and 30 VMs plus 60 laptops next year. Veeam's policy calls the thing being protected a licensed object, and publishes how many objects one licence covers.
What a VUL gives you
- Portability. Instances follow the workload across hypervisors, physical servers and clouds.
- One key. The same licence file is installed on the backup server and consumed by every supported workload type.
- Edition upgrades. Veeam's policy says upgrades between Essentials, Foundation, Advanced and Premium are available for all VULs.
- Capacity Packs for big file estates. For unstructured data generally above 250 TB, Capacity Packs are sold in 1 TB steps. When a Capacity Pack is present, all unstructured data is covered by capacity licences, not by instances.
Microsoft 365, Salesforce and Kubernetes do not draw from your VUL pool. They have their own per-user or per-node licences. A Data Platform quote for "200 instances" covers none of your mailboxes.
04How each workload consumes instances#
These are the ratios in section 1.1.1 of the Veeam Licensing Policy (v19, June 2026). They are the same for every edition. The edition changes the features, not the count.
| Licensed object | Objects per licence | Instances per object | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| VM or cloud VM | 1 | 1 | VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV and other supported hypervisors; Amazon EC2, Azure VMs, Google Compute Engine |
| Server or application server | 1 | 1 | Physical Windows or Linux server with a Veeam Agent; a server protected with an enterprise application plug-in |
| Workstation or endpoint | 3 | ⅓ | Desktops and laptops with a Veeam Agent |
| Unstructured data (NAS, file shares, object storage) | 500 GB | 1 per 500 GB | SMB/NFS shares, NAS filers, S3-compatible buckets protected as a source |
| Entra ID identity | 10 users | 1 per 10 users | Every enabled member user in the tenant must be licensed |
Veeam's VCSP rental table also lists public cloud databases, public cloud file shares and applications at the same rate as a VM. For subscription VUL, the licensing policy table lists only the five rows above, so confirm with XcellHost how cloud databases are counted on your quote.
Instance calculator
One size per share, comma-separated. Each share is rounded down to the nearest 500 GB, then the shares are added. A 499 GB share uses nothing; 1,490 GB uses 2 instances.
05Counting rules, overage and grace periods#
Three rules decide your real instance count: the 31-day window, rounding for unstructured data, and the overage allowance built into the licence key.
| Rule | What Veeam says | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 31-day window | A workload is protected if at least one restore point (backup or native snapshot) was created for it in the past 31 days | Decommissioned machines stop counting a month after their last backup. You can also revoke a licence from a machine in the console |
| Unstructured data rounding | One instance covers 500 GB of protected data. Each source is rounded down to the nearest 500 GB, then sources are added | 590 GB → 1 instance; 1,510 GB → 3. Several jobs on one source are summed first, then rounded once |
| Free operations | Backup copy jobs and backup-to-tape jobs do not consume capacity; restores from object storage need no licence | A second copy to tape or cloud does not double your count |
| Overage, auto-update on | Up to 20 instances or 20%, whichever is greater. A weekly warning starts after 10 or 10% | Short-term growth keeps working. Beyond the allowance, extra workloads are not processed |
| Overage, auto-update off | Up to 10 instances or 10%, with warnings after 5 or 5% | Turn on automatic licence update unless your backup server is air-gapped |
| Socket licences | No overage. Workloads over the limit are not processed | Add sockets or VULs before you add hosts |
| Capacity licences | The per-TB limit for unstructured data cannot be exceeded | Size Capacity Packs with headroom |
When a licence expires
| Licence type | Notice before expiry | Grace period | After grace |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | 30 days | 30 days | Workloads stop being processed and jobs fail. Restores from existing backups still work |
| Rental (VCSP) | 7 days | 60 days | As above |
| Evaluation | 30 days | None | Processing stops |
| Perpetual (socket or instance) | 14 days before support ends | n/a | The licence never expires; support and access to later updates do |
Run a licence report in the console the week before renewal. Machines that were retired more than 31 days ago drop off automatically, and that number is the honest base for your renewal quote.
06Editions: Essentials, Foundation, Advanced, Premium#
Veeam describes Foundation as backup and recovery for every workload, Advanced as adding proactive monitoring, analytics and threat insights, and Premium as adding orchestrated recovery and full cyber resilience. The component products behind those labels are confirmed in Veeam's own product documentation.
| Essentials | Foundation | Advanced | Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | Small businesses | Backup and recovery | Monitoring and threat insight | Orchestrated, tested recovery |
| Licence packs | 5 instances, max 50 | 10 instances | 10 instances | 10 instances |
| Backup & Replication | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Veeam ONE | Per Essentials package* | — | ✓ (Advanced = Veeam ONE "Suite") | ✓ |
| Recovery Orchestrator | — | — (not usable) | Only with extra Orchestrator licences | ✓ |
| Coveware Recon Scanner | — | — | Recon free for VCSP tenants | ✓ (packs of 10) |
| Feature themes (veeam.com) | Small-business package | Instant recovery, CDP, hardened Software Appliance | YARA scans, Threat Hunter, SIEM/SOAR, Threat Center | Orchestrated recovery, validation testing, GRC audit reporting |
| Add-ons | Veeam Data Cloud Vault storage, Veeam Cyber Secure and the Coveware readiness & response retainer are add-ons, not included in an edition | |||
* Veeam ONE has its own "Essentials" package, but Veeam's documentation does not say exactly which Veeam ONE features ship with Data Platform Essentials. Confirm with XcellHost. Recovery Orchestrator's documentation says it cannot be used with Foundation because Foundation has no Veeam ONE licensing section.
Edition chooser
Veeam ONE and Recovery Orchestrator on their own
- Veeam ONE standalone is no longer sold to new customers. Veeam ONE Community Edition monitors up to 10 Backup & Replication instances for free.
- Recovery Orchestrator standalone is sold in packs of 10 orchestrated instances, requires Veeam ONE, and must be merged with a Data Platform licence before use. You can also use an Advanced licence that includes additional Orchestrator licences.
07Free editions, trials and NFR#
| Offer | Limit | Support | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backup & Replication Community Edition | 10 workloads (VMs, servers, endpoints, NAS) | None paid; forums and docs | One installation per source infrastructure; telemetry required; must not be mixed with paid licences. Backup to object storage needs a licence |
| Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 Community Edition | 10 users, 1 TB SharePoint data, 10 teams | Best effort | No time limit, no functional restriction |
| Veeam Backup for AWS / Azure (free) | 10 EC2 instances / 10 Azure VMs | Best effort | Above 10, buy VUL packs of 10 |
| Veeam Kasten Free | 5 nodes | Community | Functionally the same as Enterprise |
| Kasten Enterprise Trial | 60 days, up to 500 nodes | — | Converts to a subscription |
| Evaluation licence | 30 days from download | 30-day evaluation support | No grace period. Processing stops on day 31 |
| NFR (Not For Resale) | For demos, training and education | Best effort | No commercial use |
| Promo | Extra instances on top of a paid licence for a set time | As primary licence | Granted instances disappear at the end, with no grace period |
If you remove a paid key from a backup server, Veeam reverts to Community Edition. Workloads above 10 then stop being processed. Never remove the old key until the new one is ready to install.
08Microsoft 365, Entra ID and Salesforce#
Software-as-a-service backup is licensed per user, outside the VUL pool. You can run Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 yourself, or buy Veeam Data Cloud, where Veeam runs the infrastructure and includes the storage.
| Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (self-hosted) | Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 (SaaS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | You or your provider, on your servers | Veeam, as a service |
| Unit | Per protected user account, minimum 10 | Per user per month, Foundation / Advanced / Premium plans |
| Storage | Yours: on-prem, object storage, or a provider's | Unlimited backup storage included |
| Entra ID | Separate | Included in Advanced and Premium |
| Terms | Subscription 1–5 years; rental monthly for providers | Annual or multi-year paid upfront, or monthly in arrears for usage |
| Support | As purchased | 24×7 production support included |
Who consumes a Microsoft 365 licence (self-hosted)
- Each protected user account uses one unit. A user's mailbox, online archive and personal site together count once.
- Shared, resource, group and public folder mailboxes are free, but only if no Microsoft 365 licence is assigned to them.
- Teams and non-personal SharePoint sites do not consume units themselves, but users who are members of a backed-up team or can access a backed-up site must be licensed.
- 31 days again: an object not backed up for 31 days has its unit revoked automatically. Restores never need a licence.
On Veeam Data Platform, Entra ID is counted at 10 users per instance and every enabled member user must be licensed. Standalone Entra ID and Salesforce offerings start at 10 users; Salesforce counts Salesforce and Salesforce Platform user licences, and sandbox users are not licensed. XcellHost also runs its own Entra ID Backup at ₹125 per user a month, excl. GST.
Veeam publishes US-dollar list prices for Veeam Data Cloud. Indian resellers and providers set their own local prices. XcellHost quotes Veeam Data Cloud in rupees: price on quote.
09Veeam Data Cloud Vault and India regions#
Vault is Veeam's immutable cloud storage, billed per TB per month in three editions: Archive, Foundation and Advanced. Storage, API calls and egress are included. You choose the region, and pricing varies by region.
| Vault edition | India regions listed by Veeam | Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced · Core | Central India | Microsoft Azure |
| Advanced · Core | Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) | AWS |
| Advanced · Non-Core | South India | Microsoft Azure |
| Archive | Central India, South India | Microsoft Azure |
| Foundation · Non-Core | India (country-level choice; no region named) | Microsoft Azure |
| Foundation · Core | India not listed | — |
Choosing an Indian region keeps the backup data in India. It does not by itself tell you where the management plane, logs or support access sit. Ask for the region, edition (Core or Non-Core) and log location in writing before you sign.
10Kubernetes: Veeam Kasten#
Kasten is licensed per worker node, on subscription, and does not use VUL instances. Veeam lists three options: Kasten Free, Kasten for Modern Virtualization and Kasten Enterprise.
| Option | Limit | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Kasten Free | Up to 5 nodes | Labs and small clusters; same functions as Enterprise |
| Enterprise Trial | 60 days, up to 500 nodes | Proof of concept |
| Kasten for Modern Virtualization | Subscription, node-based | VMs running on Kubernetes (for example OpenShift Virtualization); upgradable to full container protection |
| Kasten Enterprise | Subscription, node-based | Production container apps; Multi-Cluster Manager lets one licence cover many clusters |
Veeam's support policy says every Kasten node must be licensed and covered by a valid support contract. Count nodes after autoscaling, not the minimum node pool. See also OpenShift as a Service.
11Licence and key types#
| Type | Term | Support | Who gets it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Usually 1–3 years; maximum 5 years from order | Basic or Production for the full term | End customers. Backup and support stop at the end of the term until renewed |
| Perpetual | Never expires | One year included, then annual renewals | Existing holders. New perpetual socket sales have stopped |
| Rental | Usually 1–12 months, renews automatically | Through the provider | Veeam Cloud & Service Providers (VCSP) only, billed monthly on reported usage |
| Evaluation | 30 days | Evaluation support | Anyone downloading the product |
| NFR | Set by Veeam | Best effort | Partners and trainers; no commercial use |
| Promo | Set by sales | As primary | Added on top of a perpetual or subscription key |
| Community / Free | No expiry | Best effort | Small estates within the free limits |
Your licence file states its type, edition, instance count, and licence and support expiry dates. Check those four lines against the quote when the key arrives, before you install it.
12Legacy socket licences and moving to VUL#
Socket licences count each occupied CPU socket on a vSphere or Hyper-V host. They cover VMs on those two hypervisors only. Everything else, including Proxmox, Nutanix AHV, agents and NAS, needs VUL. New perpetual socket sales have stopped, but existing socket licences keep working and can be renewed.
Socket → VUL migration helper
—
| Socket rule | Detail |
|---|---|
| Annual perpetual renewal | 27% of the full new-licence list price for Production support; 22% for legacy sockets on Basic support |
| Lapsed support | After all support contracts for a product have lapsed for 6 months, licences can no longer be renewed. The policy sets a 25% reinstatement fee on past-due renewals |
| Support expiry | The software keeps working, but you cannot install product updates released after support ends |
| Migration | Must cover all sockets on the contract; new VULs bought to replace sockets without Migration SKUs are not permitted; in most cases migration extends support by one year |
| Mixing keys | Socket licences can merge with VULs (the result follows the socket edition), but KB4550 says to keep only the VUL file after migration |
| What you gain | Per KB4550: the Software Appliance, native Nutanix AHV and Proxmox VE support, per-workload licensing; Standard and Enterprise socket holders also gain threat detection tools, four-eyes authorisation, KMS integration, instant SQL Server and Oracle recovery, MongoDB protection |
During migration you remove the socket key before installing the VUL. For that moment the server runs as Community Edition. Schedule the swap between backup windows, and have the VUL file downloaded first.
13VCSP rental: how service providers license Veeam#
Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partners use rental licences. They are billed monthly on reported usage, measured in points per workload, and can protect customer data in single or multi-tenant set-ups. XcellHost delivers Veeam as a managed service* (* confirm XcellHost's current VCSP status before you rely on rental terms).
| Workload (VCSP rental) | Foundation | Advanced | Premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| VM · server · application · public cloud VM, database or file share | 11 | 13 | 16 |
| Workstation | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| File shares or object storage, per 500 GB | 10 | 11 | 11 |
| Microsoft Entra ID, per 10-user pack | 10 | 11 | 11 |
Points per workload per month, from Veeam's VCSP reference guide for Data Platform on Backup & Replication 13 and later. Advanced and Premium partners can use Recon for Veeam Infrastructure free for their tenants.
How the monthly cycle works
- The provider's backup servers connect to Veeam Service Provider Console, which is free.
- The console builds a monthly License Usage Report from the high-watermark use across all servers holding the licence.
- The provider submits that usage in the VCSP Pulse portal to its Veeam aggregator, which bills it.
- A No Commit agreement gives 75 days of use, extended 30 days for each month of reported usage. Volume Rental Agreements give longer terms in return for a monthly minimum in points (Veeam's example: 200 points).
VCSP rental vs subscription vs perpetual
Points use the workload counts from Tool 1. Point prices are set in each provider's agreement with its aggregator, so rupee amounts are on quote.
—
| VCSP rental (through a provider) | VUL subscription | Perpetual (legacy) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing | Monthly, on reported usage | Upfront for 1–5 years | Bought once; support renewed yearly |
| Scaling down | Next month's report falls | Fixed until renewal | Fixed |
| Licence holder | The provider | You | You |
| Expiry grace | 60 days | 30 days | None needed (support expires) |
| Reporting | Provider reports monthly via VSPC and VCSP Pulse | Optional automatic usage reporting | None |
| Can you buy it new? | Yes, through a VCSP | Yes | No new perpetual socket sales |
14Support, renewals, co-terming and merging#
| Basic | Production | Premier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hours | Mon–Fri, 8 a.m.–8 p.m. local business days | 24×7×365 | 24×7×365, plus a Support Account Manager in business hours |
| Severity 1 response target | 2 business hours | 1 hour | 30 minutes |
| Severity 2 | 8 business hours | 3 hours | 30 minutes |
| Severity 3 | 12 business hours | 6 hours | 30 minutes |
| Severity 4 | 24 business hours | 8 hours | 30 minutes |
| Round-the-clock Sev 1 work | No | Yes | Yes |
Response targets are goals, not guarantees. A case must be opened on the Customer Portal before phone support. Local-language first-level support in Asia Pacific is English, Japanese and Mandarin, for Backup & Replication only. Production is the default level for nearly all offerings, and a customer's support defaults to the lowest level across their licences.
Renewals & co-terming
- Subscriptions renewed within 30 days after the end extend from the original expiry date; later renewals start when the purchase order is processed.
- Perpetual maintenance always extends from the support expiry date, so renewing early loses nothing.
- Co-terming aligns several contracts to one expiry date. Monthly SKUs are used only for that alignment, priced per socket or per 10 VULs.
Merging licences
- Allowed for customers current on maintenance, in the customer portal or by support case.
- Editions must match; the merged key takes the earliest licence and support expiry dates.
- Essentials VULs and Capacity Packs merge only up to 50 VULs and 50 TB.
If you bought Veeam in three separate orders, ask for a co-term quote at your next renewal. One expiry date means one renewal, one support level and one key to manage.
15How XcellHost prices Veeam work in India#
Veeam licences are price on quote in rupees, to your instance count, edition and term. The services around them have fixed list prices on our product pages. Every price below is copied exactly from the linked page, is indicative and excludes 18% GST.
| Item | Price* | Unit | Page |
|---|---|---|---|
| Veeam Data Platform licences (any edition), Veeam Data Cloud, Vault, Kasten | Price on quote | — | Veeam services |
| Backup operations · Essential (Resilience Operations) | ₹999 | per workload / month, min 5 workloads | Resilience Operations · Veeam |
| Backup operations · Professional | ₹2,499 | per workload / month, min 5 workloads | Resilience Operations · Veeam |
| Annual billing on Resilience Operations | −10% | on the monthly price | Resilience Operations |
| Onboarding & transition | ₹24,999 | one-time | Resilience Operations |
| Private Cloud DR target in Mumbai (3-node cluster) | ₹49,999 | per month | Private Cloud |
| Extra Private Cloud node | ₹17,999 | per node / month | Private Cloud |
| Immutable India storage, Mumbai | ₹1,999 | per TB / month | Cloud DR for SMB |
| Quarterly restore drill | ₹4,999 | per quarter | Cloud DR for SMB |
| VMware exit assessment | ₹49,999 | one-time | VMware migration |
| VM migration | ₹2,999 | per VM; free when the destination is XcellHost Private Cloud | VMware migration |
| 24×7 SOC for backup alerts (Managed Security Operations, Essential) | ₹199 | per endpoint / month | Security Operations |
| Entra ID Backup by XcellHost | ₹125 | per user / month | Entra ID Backup |
* Indicative XcellHost prices, INR, excl. 18% GST, checked on the linked pages on 7 November 2026. Most carry an asterisk there too: confirm with XcellHost.
- ₹2,499 per workload: two labels. The Veeam catalogue and Resilience Operations call it "backup operations, Professional". The Cloud DR for SMB page calls the same ₹2,499 "Managed DR, Warm", and adds backup and standby compute on top. Ask which scope your quote covers.
- ₹999: two different services. On the Veeam and Resilience Operations pages, ₹999 is per workload for running your backups (minimum 5). On the Cloud DR for SMB page, ₹999 is per server for XcellBackup / Direct Backup storage-based backup. Same number, different product.
- Minimum 5 workloads appears on Resilience Operations and Cloud DR for SMB, but not on the Veeam catalogue card. We assume it applies.
XcellHost's quotation is final. Ask us to confirm any line before you order.
16India compliance and your Veeam choices#
A licence does not make you compliant. The edition, storage location and retention you choose decide how easily you can produce evidence. This is general information, so check it with your counsel or CA.
| Rule | What it asks (summary) | Veeam choice that helps |
|---|---|---|
| DPDP Act 2023 and DPDP Rules 2025 | Reasonable security safeguards for personal data and breach intimation | Encryption, immutable repositories, an Indian Vault or XcellHost region, access logs. See DPDP compliance platform |
| CERT-In Directions, 28 April 2022 | Report specified incidents within 6 hours; keep ICT logs for a rolling 180 days in India | Advanced or Premium for threat detection and SIEM integration; logs kept in India |
| Companies (Accounts) Rules, rule 3(5) | Daily backup of electronic books on servers physically in India | Daily job + Indian repository + job reports. See daily backup of books |
| RBI-regulated entities | Business continuity and tested recovery | Premium's orchestrated, documented recovery tests, or XcellHost quarterly drills |
Veeam lists Azure Central India and South India and AWS Mumbai and Hyderabad for Vault. XcellHost runs its own Tier IV data centre in Mumbai. Either keeps the offsite copy in India, and our Mumbai SOC can watch the alerts 24×7.
17Worked examples#
Three sample businesses, not real customers. Instance counts use Veeam's published ratios; service prices are XcellHost list prices, excl. GST. Licences are on quote.
CA firm · 3 VMs, 6 laptops, 1 NAS
Tally on one VM, two other VMs, six laptops and a 700 GB NAS share: 10 workloads.
| 3 VMs × 1 | 3 |
| 6 workstations ÷ 3 | 2 |
| NAS 700 GB → 500 GB | 1 |
| Instances | 6 |
| Fits | Community (10 workloads) |
Free fits, but there is no paid support and no room to grow. Essentials (packs of 5 → buy 10) adds support. Add XcellHost immutable storage in Mumbai at ₹1,999 per TB a month for the daily-books rule.
Manufacturer · 60 VMs, 8 servers
Two plants on vSphere moving to Proxmox, 8 physical servers, 30 PCs and 3 TB of file shares.
| 60 VMs + 8 servers | 68 |
| 30 PCs ÷ 3 | 10 |
| 3,000 GB ÷ 500 | 6 |
| Instances → buy | 84 → 90 |
| Ops Essential, 68 workloads × ₹999 | ₹67,932/mo |
Above 50, so Foundation or Advanced in packs of 10. VUL covers Proxmox; sockets would not. Ops priced on servers and VMs only; PCs priced separately.
NBFC · DR evidence for RBI
120 VMs, 12 servers, 400 Entra ID users, tested DR to Mumbai.
| 120 VMs + 12 servers | 132 |
| 400 Entra users ÷ 10 | 40 |
| Instances → buy (Premium) | 172 → 180 |
| Mumbai DR target + 2 nodes | ₹85,997/mo |
| Onboarding | ₹24,999 once |
Premium for Recovery Orchestrator's tested plans and audit reports. DR target: ₹49,999 + 2 × ₹17,999. Licences on quote.
18Mistakes to avoid#
- Counting laptops as full instances. Three workstations share one instance.
- Rounding NAS up instead of down. Each share rounds down to the nearest 500 GB, and shares under 500 GB use nothing.
- Expecting VUL to cover Microsoft 365 or Kubernetes. Both are licensed separately, per user and per node.
- Forgetting Entra ID users. On Data Platform, every enabled member user must be licensed, at 10 users per instance.
- Buying Foundation and expecting Recovery Orchestrator. It needs Premium, or Advanced with extra Orchestrator licences.
- Planning past 50 on Essentials. Essentials cannot be merged above 50 instances.
- Removing the old key first. The server drops to Community Edition until the new key is in.
- Buying new VULs to replace sockets without Migration SKUs. Veeam does not permit it.
- Letting socket support lapse 6 months. After that, the licence can no longer be renewed.
- Leaving automatic licence update off. It halves your overage allowance, from 20% to 10%.
19Buyer checklist#
Tick the items as you go. Ticks are saved in this browser only. Download the list as a CSV or print it to PDF.
20Glossary#
- Aggregator
- The Veeam partner that holds a VCSP's rental agreement and bills its monthly usage.
- Capacity Pack
- A licence for unstructured data in 1 TB steps, generally for estates above 250 TB (Essentials: 5–50 TB).
- Co-terming
- Aligning several Veeam contracts to one expiry date, using monthly SKUs.
- Community Edition
- Free Backup & Replication for up to 10 workloads, without paid support.
- Essentials
- The small-business package of Veeam Data Platform, in packs of 5 instances up to 50.
- Gifted VUL
- One free VUL per perpetual socket, up to six, for non-VM workloads.
- High watermark
- The peak usage in a month, which VCSP rental reporting is based on.
- Instance
- The unit of a Veeam Universal License. One VM or server uses one; three workstations share one; 500 GB of unstructured data uses one.
- Kasten
- Veeam's Kubernetes backup product, licensed per worker node.
- Licensed object
- The policy's term for a protected thing: a VM, server, workstation, 500 GB of data or an Entra ID user.
- Migration SKU
- The part number used to move perpetual socket licences to VUL. It must cover every socket on the contract.
- NFR
- Not For Resale: a free licence for demos, training and education.
- Points (PPU)
- VCSP rental consumption units per workload per month, which differ by edition.
- Protected workload
- A workload with at least one restore point created in the past 31 days.
- Recovery Orchestrator
- Veeam's tool for orchestrated, tested DR plans; included in Premium.
- Rental licence
- A monthly licence available only to VCSP partners, billed on reported usage.
- Socket licence
- Legacy licence per occupied CPU socket on vSphere or Hyper-V hosts. No new perpetual sales.
- Software Appliance
- Veeam's pre-hardened, turnkey deployment of the backup server; a VUL feature.
- VCSP
- Veeam Cloud & Service Provider, the programme for providers that deliver Veeam as a service.
- VCSP Pulse
- Veeam's portal where providers generate licences and submit monthly usage.
- Veeam ONE
- Monitoring and reporting for Veeam and virtual infrastructure; included in Advanced and Premium.
- Veeam Data Cloud
- Veeam's SaaS family: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Salesforce, Azure and Vault storage.
- VSPC
- Veeam Service Provider Console, the free console providers use to manage tenants and build usage reports.
- VUL
- Veeam Universal License: a portable pool of instances usable across workload types.
No terms match.