SP Per-VM Licensing Exceeded

Challenge

SP Tenants receive error messages that state ‘Service Provider has exceeded the licensed VM count’
 
Error that appears in SP report:
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Licensed Cloud Connect Backup VM count has been exceeded. We will stop accepting data for all VMs above licensed quota at <date>. To ensure uninterrupted service, please acquire and install a license file with larger number of VMs, or decrease the number of protected VMs by disabling or deleting some tenants.





Error(s) that occurs on Client Side job:
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Error: Cannot backup this VM because your service provider has reached licensed VM limit.



 

Cause

The Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license is consumed only by active VMs. An active VM is a VM that has been successfully backed up, copied or replicated by an active (not disabled) tenant with an active lease period (if lease is set up). The number of restore points created by tenants or the number of jobs that process VMs does not consume the license. For example, if a tenant processes the same VM with several backup jobs, this VM is considered as 1 active VM.
 
The total number of active VMs must not exceed the total number of VMs in the license. Depending on the number of active VMs, the Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license can be in one of the following states:
 
Normal: the total number of active VMs does not exceed the total number of VMs in the license. Tenants can freely process existing and new VMs: back up and copy VMs to the cloud repository and replicate VMs to cloud hosts.
 
Grace: after the total number of active VMs exceeds the total number of VMs in the license, the license is put to the Grace state. Tenants can still process existing and new VMs regardless the number of VMs in the license. VMs that exceed the license limit are tracked separately for future FIFO (First In First Out) processing. If free license slots appear due to older VMs no longer being protected, VMs from the FIFO list occupy free license slots on the FIFO basis.
 
The Grace state is valid for 60 days. After the 60-days period expires, the license is put to the Post grace state.
 
Post grace: the total number of active VMs exceeds the total number of VMs in the license and the grace period has expired. Tenants can back up, copy and replicate only those VMs that have already been backed up, copied and replicated while the license was in Normal and Grace states. VMs that exceed the license limit are no longer processed.
 
The license in the Post grace state can get to the Normal state if the SP obtains and installs a license for a greater number of VMs.
 
Recovery: During the Grace period, the SP may return to the license limits. This can happen if the number of active VMs reduces. In this situation, the license it put to the Recovery state. Tenants can back up and copy VMs to the cloud repository and replicate VMs to cloud.
 
The Recovery state is valid for 1 day. After that, Veeam Backup & Replication changes the license state:
 
If the number of active VMs remains within the license limits during 1 day, the license is put back to the Normal state.
 
If the number of active VMs exceeds the number VMs in the license at any time during 1 day, the license is returned to the Grace state. Veeam Backup & Replication does not start the Grace period anew: it resumes the earlier Grace period. For example, the license was first put to the Grace state on June 10. On June 13 the number of active VMs reduced and the license was put to the Recovery state. On June 14 the number of active VMs was again exceeded and the license is returned to the Grace state. The license will be in the Grace state till August 10. After that, the license will be put to the Post grace state.
 

Solution

The number of active VMs in the Veeam Cloud Connect service provider license can reduce for one of the following reasons:
 
The SP disables or removes a tenant account. As a result, all tenant’s VMs become inactive and the equal number of VMs is revoked for other tenants.
 
The SP resets the VM count for the tenant. As a result, the corresponding number of VMs becomes inactive and the equal number of VMs is revoked for this tenant or other tenants.
 
A tenant removes backups and replicas created for one or several VMs on the cloud repository and cloud host. As a result, the corresponding number of VMs becomes inactive and the equal number of VMs is revoked for this tenant or other tenants. However, when a tenant runs a job that processes a VM for which backup and replica were deleted, such VM becomes active, and the number of active VMs in the SP license increases.
 
To reduce the number of managed VMs in a Hosting license, the SP can do the following
 
Remove backup jobs that were configured on tenant's Veeam backup server and are no longer required (or exclude specific VMs from backup jobs).
Remove VM backups created by these jobs from the Veeam backup repository.

More Information

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/cloud/cloud_connect_sp_license.html
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/cloud/sp_reduce_vms.html