Veeam Backup & Replication • [V13] Appeal for VSA Licensing Consistency (Community Edition)

I'm writing this quickly due to time constraints - apologies if my comments are unclear. I can try to clarify later.

The one thing that makes Veeam as a company stand out from the rest has always been that when I've asked the question "How do I restore from my old backups if I cease to be a Veeam customer in the future?", the answer has always been "You can install and use Community Edition to import old backup chains and restore workloads."

A Veeam competitor could come out tomorrow and kick Veeam's butt from every other angle - performance, security, cost - and it wouldn't matter if they don't make a similar promise to the above.

That's why I'm somewhat concerned that the V13 FAQ notes that the VSA/JeOS deployment will not allow CE licensing. I get it from a technical perspective - it's the same code, so CE users can continue to operate V13 under a Windows installation, but I can't shake the intuition that this is Veeam testing the waters on reducing (or even eliminating) their commitment to Community Edition going forward.

I'd really appreciate if someone from Veeam can comment and address my concerns here. The CE commitment (and the lack of competitors offering something similar) is the main reason maintaining my personal customer loyalty to Veeam. I'm certain I can't be the only one out here with similar thoughts.

Statistics: Posted by FCU_JE — Sep 09, 2025 2:27 pm

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