Backup Exec offers a variety of licensing models so that you can purchase Backup Exec licenses as per your requirement.
Backup Exec introduced the Bronze/Silver/Gold (BSG) licenses with the Capacity usage meter in Backup Exec 20.x. With this model, the features offered by Backup Exec are categorized into three tiers, Bronze, Silver, and Gold. You can purchase any tier based on the features you want to use. Tied to the license is also a Capacity usage meter where calculations are done based on Front end data backed up by a Backup Exec server.
There was a request from Backup Exec customers to introduce another usage meter for the following use cases:
- Reduce the licensing cost for small environments, which may have large data for backup but the numbers of servers/machines being backed up remain the same.
- Reduce prices compared to the BSG licenses with capacity usage meter.
The Backup Exec Instance-based license was introduced in Backup Exec 21.0 that is available with the Subscription and Perpetual edition.
What is an Instance?
Any physical machine or virtual machine from which the backup is considered as an instance for license calculation. For Multi-server applications (such as Microsoft SharePoint) or cluster setup, each node or system is considered as an Instance.
In Backup Exec 21.2 changes were made around Instance-based Licensing to raise usage-based alerts and now in Backup Exec 21.4, enforcement changes are done to prevent backup jobs from running in case of over-deployment.
Backup Exec will be in one licensing state at any point:
Normal State: When backed-up instance count is less than licensed number of instances.
Grace State: When the backed-up instance count exceeds the licensed number of instances, a 30-day grace period starts. In this state backups of all instances are successful. Alerts are raised periodically to inform the user to take corrective actions.
Enforcement State: If no action is taken in the Grace period of 30 days, Backup Exec enters the Enforcement state. In this state, Backup Exec allows backups for entitled instances only. For the other instances, backup fails with a licensing error. The hostname or FQDN of the physical machine and virtual machine must not be changed or it is considered as a new instance and the backup fails.
You can manage or view the instance details from the Backup Exec user interface > Home Tab > Licensed status > Manage Instances.
For more information on Instance-based licensing, refer to this article.
For more details on Backup Exec licensing, refer to the Backup Exec licensing guide.
