Hi,

Licenses are consumed for the user if you protect the user’s mailbox, OneDrive, or personal SharePoint site. It is part of the licensing agreement that you protect all (internal) users that can access a SharePoint site or Team you are protecting.

With the variable license model the customer can exceed paid capacity, but this isn’t a “permitted” overage or graceful percentage buffer, the customer will periodically be required to “true up” their license consumption by co-terming the additional licenses required to their subscription.

Hi ​@hs08 

Great set of questions, happy to share some clarity based on my experience with VDC for Microsoft 365:

License Tolerance:

VDC for M365 follows a strict license enforcement model. If you exceed your licensed user count, backups for additional users will not proceed unless you increase your license count. There’s no automatic grace or tolerance buffer, but you can always reach out to Veeam support or your partner for temporary flexibility during transitions.

Mailbox-Based Licensing:

Yes, typically 1 license is consumed per user with a mailbox. This includes users with Exchange Online mailboxes, and depending on your configuration, it may also include OneDrive and Teams data tied to that user.

SharePoint Licensing:

SharePoint Online sites are licensed separately from user mailboxes. In your example, 200 mailbox users would consume 200 user licenses. The 500 SharePoint sites would require additional SharePoint licenses, which are calculated based on the number of protected sites, not users. You can monitor this via the VDC portal or request a usage report from your Veeam partner.

Feel free share your feedback!

Hi ​@waqasali,

I’m sorry to publicly disagree but some of your comments aren’t quite true.

With regards to license tolerance, we have a Variable and a Fixed license model. Variable permits overages with a periodic true up, fixed required static assignment of licenses to users.

There also isn’t a separate license type for M365 types such as mailboxes or sites. There is no calculation of protected sites, just the requirement that those who access the site internally are licensed, as per my comment earlier.

Thanks,

Michael

Hi ​@MicoolPaul 

Thanks for your clarification I really appreciate your input and the correction. You are absolutely right to point out the distinction between Variable and Fixed licensing models in VDC for Microsoft 365.

I had primarily referenced the Fixed model in my response, and it's great to have your insight on how Variable licensing allows for overages with periodic true.

Thanks,

Waqas