VSPC is free. Worth saying up front, because a lot of MSPs running Cloud Connect have either never deployed it or set it up years ago and never fully used it. It’s a free product that Veeam ships separately, and once you understand what it actually does, it’s hard to imagine running a Veeam MSP practice without it. It’s the management layer above VBR that handles tenant onboarding, license distribution, usage reporting, billing data, and the monitoring visibility you need across your entire customer base without logging into each VBR server individually.

This covers a production VSPC deployment: architecture decisions, tenant onboarding step by step, the Pulse integration for license management, usage reporting for monthly billing, the monitoring dashboards that actually matter, and the REST API for automating the workflows that would otherwise eat your team’s time at scale.

1. Architecture and Deployment

VSPC is a Windows application that installs on a dedicated server. It needs a SQL Server or PostgreSQL database (PostgreSQL is the current default), and it manages your VBR infrastructure through the Veeam Management Agent rather than connecting to VBR servers directly. The management agent installs on tenant VBR servers when tenants check the “Allow this VBR to be managed by the service provider” option in their Service Provider wizard. For tenant VBR servers in client infrastructure, the management agent connects outbound to the SP cloud gateway over TCP 6180, the same port Cloud Connect uses. For VBR servers co-located in the SP infrastructure, the management agent connects to the VSPC server on TCP 9999. TCP 9398 is the VBR REST API port used by Enterprise Manager and direct API consumers. It is not part of the VSPC management path.

VSPC and your Cloud Connect VBR server should be isolated from each other but both need to be accessible from tenant environments. The best practice from the Veeam SP architecture guide is to keep VSPC and VCC as separate components even if you’re running a smaller deployment. Collapsing them onto one server makes future scaling harder and increases the blast radius if one component has issues.

2. Tenant Onboarding

Onboarding a tenant in VSPC means creating a Company record that ties together the tenant’s Cloud Connect account, their VBR server (if they’re using one), and their license. The order matters: Company first, then Cloud Connect site, then license. Going out of order creates mapping problems. They’re annoying to untangle.

1. In VSPC, go to Organizations, then Companies, and click New. Enter the company name, contact information, and the reseller if applicable. This creates the Company record that everything else hangs off.

2. With the Company created, go to the Sites tab on the company record and click Add. Select your Cloud Connect VBR server as the infrastructure source and assign the Cloud Connect tenant account you created in VBR to this company. VSPC will verify the mapping connects correctly.

3. If the tenant has their own VBR server that you’re managing, instruct them to open their VBR console, go to the Service Provider wizard, and check “Allow this VBR to be managed by the service provider.” This installs the Veeam Management Agent on their VBR server, which VSPC discovers on the next polling cycle and associates with the Company record.

4. Generate and push the tenant license. See Section 3 for the Pulse integration workflow.

⚠ TLS inspection on any network device between VSPC and tenant VBR servers will break the management agent connection. This includes tenant side firewalls doing deep packet inspection. It’s the same issue as Cloud Connect gateways. Document it in your tenant onboarding instructions. Tenants who configure TLS inspection on their internet edge will break VSPC management connectivity and it will look like a Veeam issue until you trace it to the firewall.

3. License Management with Pulse Integration

VCSP Pulse is the licensing database in Veeam’s ProPartner portal. It’s where your contracts live, where you generate license keys, and where you submit monthly usage reports. VSPC integrates with Pulse through a plugin that makes the entire license workflow happen inside VSPC rather than requiring you to log into the ProPartner portal, download license files, and email them to tenants.

The integration turns that manual, error prone process into a push. You generate the license in VSPC, it gets created in Pulse automatically, and the license file is pushed directly to the tenant’s VBR server through the management agent. No file exchange. No waiting for tenants to install it. No follow-up emails asking if they got it.

1. In VSPC, go to Configuration, then Plugin Library, then VSPC Pulse Portal. Enter your Pulse credentials and enable the integration. VSPC connects to Pulse and syncs your contract details.

2. On the Company record for a tenant, go to the License tab and click Generate. Select the product, the number of workloads, and the expiration date. VSPC creates the license in Pulse and pushes it to the tenant’s environment.

3. Monitor license usage from the Companies view. The Workloads column shows how many workloads each tenant has consumed against their license. Tenants approaching their limit show a warning indicator.

4. At the end of each month, go to License Management, then Usage Reports, and generate the monthly report. Submit this to Veeam through Pulse. VSPC generates the report automatically from the usage data it collects throughout the month.

ℹ Veeam’s best practice is to generate a separate license for each tenant’s VBR server rather than one large license shared across multiple tenants. Separate licenses give you the ability to set specific limits per tenant, revoke a license from one tenant without affecting others, and track usage at the individual tenant level for accurate billing. One license per tenant is more administrative overhead initially but significantly cleaner at scale.

4. Usage Reporting for Billing

VSPC generates monthly usage reports automatically at the start of each month reflecting the previous month’s consumption. The report covers every billable component: Cloud Connect backup and replication resource usage, VBR rental license usage, Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 usage, and Veeam Agent usage across all managed tenants.

For MSPs who need more granular billing data (billing cycles that don’t align with calendar months, mid month usage snapshots, or per company breakdowns), the VSPC REST API provides real time usage endpoints that let you pull current consumption at any point in the month.

VSPC REST API: Pull current usage by company for billing

# Authenticate to VSPC REST API using API Key (recommended)

# Base URL: https://vspc-server:1280/api/v3

# Generate a Simple API Key in VSPC under Configuration > REST API Keys

# Get Cloud Connect backup usage by company (current month)

curl -s -X GET \

"https://vspc-server:1280/api/v3/organizations/companies/sites/backupResources/usage" \

-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \

| python3 -m json.tool

# Get VBR rental license usage by company

curl -s -X GET \

"https://vspc-server:1280/api/v3/licensing/backupServers/usage/companies" \

-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \

| python3 -m json.tool

# Get VBM365 usage by company

curl -s -X GET \

"https://vspc-server:1280/api/v3/licensing/vbm365Servers/usage/companies" \

-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \

| python3 -m json.tool

ℹ VSPC supports both API key auth and OAuth password grant for REST API access. API key auth (Simple Key) is the recommended method for production integrations. Generate one under Configuration, then REST API Keys, then New, then Simple Key. The key is only shown once at creation time, so save it immediately. OAuth password grant still works but API keys are easier to rotate and scope.

5. Monitoring Dashboards That Actually Matter

VSPC’s default dashboard shows a lot of information. Most of it you’ll glance at and move on. The views worth building your daily operational workflow around are:

• Backup Jobs overview filtered by Last Status: Failed or Warning. This is the first thing to check every morning. Any tenant job that’s failing or warning needs attention. VSPC shows this across your entire customer base in one view without you logging into individual VBR servers.

• Protected Workloads with Last Backup older than 24 hours. Jobs completing green doesn’t mean VMs are protected. This view shows VMs that haven’t had a successful backup in the window you define. Stale protection is a liability you want to catch before a tenant asks why their backup is three days old.

• License usage approaching limit. VSPC flags tenants whose workload count is approaching their licensed limit. Set this threshold at 80 percent so you have lead time to either expand their license or have the conversation about usage before they hit the wall and jobs start failing.

• Storage quota usage for Cloud Connect tenants. Tenants approaching their repository quota will start having backup jobs fail when the quota is exceeded. Monitor this and expand quotas proactively rather than reactively.

6. Self Service Restore for Tenants

If you want tenants to be able to restore their own files without opening a support ticket with you, VSPC provides a Client Portal with self service restore capabilities. Tenants log into the VSPC Client Portal and can browse their backup data and restore individual files, emails, or objects without SP involvement. For Cloud Connect tenants, the Client Portal handles item level restores natively. For tenants running their own managed VBR servers, file level restore requires the File Level Restore plugin deployed in the SP environment with hosted VBR resources allocated to the company in VSPC.

The self service portal doesn’t expose full restore capabilities to tenants. It’s scoped to item level restores: files, email items, SharePoint items. Full VM restores still require SP involvement. That’s the right scoping for most MSP offerings: tenants can self serve on the common daily requests (restore that file I accidentally deleted) without being able to trigger a full environment restore that might affect other tenants or consume significant infrastructure resources.

Key Takeaways

• VSPC is a free product. If you’re running a Veeam MSP practice without it you’re managing tenants, licenses, and usage reporting manually at a scale that doesn’t need to be manual.

• Onboarding order is Company, then Cloud Connect site, then license. Going out of order creates mapping problems that are painful to fix after the fact.

• The Pulse plugin eliminates the manual license file workflow. License generation, delivery to the tenant VBR server, and monthly usage reporting all happen inside VSPC without touching the ProPartner portal for individual operations.

• Generate a separate license per tenant VBR server. Shared licenses across multiple tenants make it impossible to revoke one tenant’s access without affecting others and make per tenant usage tracking inaccurate.

• TLS inspection between VSPC and tenant VBR servers breaks management agent connectivity. Document this in your tenant onboarding instructions before your first support ticket about it.

• The VSPC REST API provides real time usage data at any point in the month. For MSPs with non calendar billing cycles, this is the path to accurate mid month billing snapshots without waiting for the automated monthly report.

• Self service tenant restore is available through the VSPC Client Portal. Cloud Connect tenants get native item level restore. Managed VBR tenants need the File Level Restore plugin deployed in the SP environment. Full VM restores stay SP-gated.