Licensing not auto-renewing on VSPC

We have had a few customer experiences where some or all of a set of license keys have failed to auto-renew themselves at the end of the month, even when the license update status is “Up-to-date” and License Auto Update is turned on. No matter how often the license key update button is clicked in VSPC or in the client VBR installation, the license will not update itself. Normally this is noticed in the last week or so of the license term, when warning notifications come up about expiring licenses.

Resolving the Issue

When this first came up our first couple of resolution attempts were to manually check for license key updates, both from VSPC and from the Veeam B+R Server. Both of these would come back as successful, but no changes to the license expiry date would work, nor would removing and re-applying the license. As a joke, it was suggested to turn the auto-update for the licenses off and on again. Lo and behold, selecting the licenses, deactivating the auto-update feature and reactivating it seems to correct the auto-update capability. When the key gets reactivated, the license will not have the new dates reflected immediately, but manually triggering an update on the Veeam B+R Server, or waiting for the next daily license check-in will provide a correct license expiry date. Triggering it from the VSPC console doesn’t appear to force that update. The process is non-disruptive and does not change the license key itself, it looks to only be a metadata change to the license.

Cause of the Issue

Without knowing for sure, as I can’t replicate it, I believe that the error is related to licenses created before or during the process of enrolling in the auto-reporting capability in Veeam Pulse. When the licenses are enabled for auto-reporting, some seem to correctly auto-update, but some don’t. Licenses that existed prior to auto-reporting are affected however licenses created post auto-reporting are not, based on my observations. It does appear that once the resolution above has been completed for a given license key, it doesn’t experience the issue again in future months.