One GREAT advantage about Veeam Community Edition

The community edition is super.
I am using it at home, but it is usable for some small customers, too.

And keep in mind, there are free editions for nearly all Veeam products. So, you don’t have to fight for a test license for each test environment and can do your tests at once. On the other side Veeam gives NFR licenses to partners very generously.

Fully agree with you @JMeixner 

When, years ago, I found Veeam’s products it was like a motherly embrace.

It is one of the main vendors that has all functions work with the CE edition. Some others block other features and make you upgrade. Veeam is great with this.

I did at least 4 or 5 projects in SOHO companies with Veeam Community Edition.

Think that company that don’t have anything about data protection. Veeam Community it always be the best option. 

When Veeam Community doesn’t support the business anymore you just need to upgrade it without big reconfigurations or rework

This id definitely an advantage that you don’t have to reconfigure if you upgrade  the license level.

Downgrading is another topic

Absolutely, no headache.

Definitely a nice move from Veeam to provide such a community edition! 

@wolff.mateus 

That is a nogo.

You are forbiden by the license agreements to use the community Edition to provide Services for Third partys. If this are your customers, then they need a paid license.
Not only the installation and configuration is not allowed, you can‘t even help them with a technical issue on the community edition if they have it installed by themselves.

A paid license (or rental, if they don‘t manage it by themselves) is required.

Veeam Community Edition is a really great offer for using it in homelabs or as a small company with a completely internal IT Department. But not for „projects for customers“.

From the License Agreement:
https://www.veeam.com/eula.html

5.0 Free Licenses and Community Licenses. You may not use the Free and Community Licenses to provide services to third parties (including support services for existing installations) or to process third party data.  

@JMeixner 
The customers need a paid license if you are involved. Everything else is againts Veeam EULA :)

Yes, you ate right, my post was not clear enough.

Customers where the communuty edition edition suits their needs are so small that they don't need service. Mostly their question is what to use.

And I think the advise to use the community edition does not violate the EULA. 😎

Advising yes, but if they have a question, why something is not working, you are not allowed to help them for this infrastructure. You cannot have a look at the log. They are completely on their own. :)

Then the very good thing is, that even the community edition has best effort support by Veeam.

I haven’t seen this with any other product...

That seems to be reason why I never installed Community Edition at a customer site 

I am just curious here! Can small customers use the free Community Edition? 

Yes, if they do everything themselves.

Each company can use the community edition if they want. But not for offering services to others. Only for themselves. :)

Thank you for the clarification!

Totally right! I work for so many years inside IT department and I ever put Veeam Community to work with me in those situations.

But if you want money with Veeam Community that is not the right deal to do.

Nice point of view @Mildur!

Free forever – unlimited VMs

Describing with the help of elaborative and Insightful analysis , once you exceed 10 instances, what can you do to protect the remaining VMs? While you gain Standard edition functionality with Community Edition for up to 10 VMs, you will still be able to utilize VeeamZIP for those extra VMs that don’t quite make the 10 instances ceiling. Yes, just like before, we still allow you to protect an unlimited number of VMs with VeeamZIP for free. You’re probably wondering how does this work? Once 10 instances have been consumed, you will no longer be able to utilize the extended functionality included in Standard edition and when you try to run additional backup jobs, they will fail stating that the license has been exceeded. So, be mindful and selective of the VMs you are protecting with fully featured backup jobs — make sure you use the first 10 instances for your most important VMs, which actually do require strict RPO.

For me Community edition has been always a life saver in my home lab and home servers.

and from the “customer” perspective, I always recommended to the IT Stuff to give it a try, on the lab.

a few time I recommended a colleague from another company to install community (or demo) to protect a vmware environment that was unprotected cause the solution they had was bad, or didn't work or licenses were gone, just to be protected and test the product.

I really like having it somewhere installed “just in case”, keeping in mind that you can't sell support, on your own risk, but is a really good friend to have.

😉