Traditional vs Capacity NBU 7.5 licenses

[Khushi]

Hi,

I am working on a project where existing NetBackup tape based infrastructure will be migrated to disk based backups using EMC Data Domain 990. There are close to 400 backup clients and using traditional NBU licensing approach including multiple agents licenses.

Since new backup infrastructure will be leveraged to multiple internal clients within the organization so I have proposed to go for capacity based license model instead of traditional one. As I understood from Capacity licensing model that cost calculated on front end TBs and  includs license for all databases and applications agent. Only NBU OST for DDBoost license is needed to enable de-duplication from Media servers. 

Two queries:

All clients are ‘licensed’ for all agents at no additional cost with the capacity model? Does this include bare metal?

Can someone support me to justify capacity licensing model is better approach than traditional one in terms of cost involved?

Thanks

[Marianne]

Extract from NetBackup Licensing Guide (available to Symantec partners only):

The Platform Base model is beneficial to customers who have or plan to deploy advanced features of NetBackup such as Enterprise Client, Application and Database Packs, Data Protection Optimization

This includes Advanced/Enterprise Disk.

[Khushi]

Thanks Marianne, fortunately we are partner of Symantec so got the required license document.

[Jim-90]

Cost benefit is debatible and depends the complexity and dynamics of the infrastrucutre (starting to sound like a resaler).  From an NBU admin point of view it saves a lot of time and many don't seem to fully understand the complexities of the traditional licensing model I've seen people under and over spend by significant amountsd of money.    With the capacity license you only have to run a command (nbdeployutil) a couple times to do a licensing audit.  Running this regualrly also gives you you backup growth stats.   You are not always hassling for licensing of addtional clients and features that you want to play with.  With IP-based stoage you can set up a complete lab in VMware with no addtional license cost.  Last time I looked the Capacity license covers everything except NBU dedupe, you will not need it for the DD boxes.

You can generate a Capacity License report with somthing like this and it more useful that just for licensing 

nbdeployutil --gather --output=$rpt_path --log=$log_file
export gather_file=$(grep "capacity   : nbdeployutil --report --capacity" $log_file | awk  '{print $12}')
nbdeployutil --report --capacity $gather_file >> $log_file

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Just for the record - licensing has changed in recent months.

Capacity/platform license now includes Data Protection Optimization (dedupe).

See the extract from the Licensing Guide in my previous post.