Recently we went through the process of licensing Unitrends backup for our ESXi environment. At first everything went smoothly and seemed on track. Our salesperson was consistent with his message and told us exactly how we would be licensed with a VMware host.
Because we use ESXi we need a solution that works without API access. We want to avoid licensing to the paid version of VMware at this time. After searching on spiceworks I see unitrends does work with ESXi hosts. Okay great. We go through the sales engineer demonstration and it does what we want. The engineer stresses that the ONLY way to make this work is to install an agent on each VM. I confirm with our sales guy that this is the case. My concern is we are only licensing one host but must use an agent on each VM and I was concerned about potential licensing issues. Our sales guy confirms multiple times (even going so far as checking with management) that we can license as a single host, but use agents to backup ALL VMs on this host. Okay great. I present to multiple rounds of management/financial to get this deal approved.
We buy smoothly and get to onboarding. Things are going well, the product is working well, and we have 3 of our VMs added to our appliance backing up. Upon adding the 4th we get an error saying we are out of our license range. That is strange we have 20 VMs on the host and per our agreement can backup all of them with agents. I bring this up to our onboarding staff and they investigate to find: oh you are only licensed for 2 VMs. WHAT?
I contact my salesperson to get this corrected. After all we have this in writing. He acts at first as if he does not remember and says we should be good. After forwarding his emails that explicitly state our licensing agreement he now says he was not supposed to do it that way…
I am speechless.
We are a big company and this process has taken months. I and my staff have countless hours tied up in this project. I am absolutely shocked at the way we have been treated. We spent thousands of dollars on a product that now we are told won’t be licensed the way we specifically agreed. Unitrends professes to have “Crazy Committed Customer Service” yet now they seem to be avoiding speaking with me to resolve the issue they created. As it stands now we are currently dead in the water.
Has anyone else has had similar problems with Unitrends? I have been as polite and firm with my salesperson as possible but this is not getting anywhere. I only want to get this resolved and our licensing corrected per our agreement. I am frankly stunned that we have been dealt with in such an unprofessional manner.
3 Spice ups
John - First, thanks for choosing Unitrends. Second, my apologies that you’re having these issues. Can you private message me your contact information so that I can see what’s going on?
derek-a
(Derek_A)
3
My only confusion… You are spending thousands of dollars on software, but are using the Free version of ESXi? Why not pony up the $600 and buy the Essentials version of ESXi? Then the Backup API’s are unlocked, you get vCenter, and can use Unitrends like it was meant to be used.
4 Spice ups
I wish i could spice up Derek_a’s post more. Couldn’t agree more and i was thinking the same thing.
2 Spice ups
colinkent
(Colin Kent)
5
Indeed…
But i can spice up both Derek’s and your posts…
We are a big company and this process has taken months. I and my staff have countless hours tied up in this project
Which equates to far more wasted resources than what was trying to be saved.
its obvious the person calling the shots knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
1 Spice up
I appreciate all the guidance. Ultimately I ended up returning the product and went with a different solution. Thanks for taking the time to read and offer professional advice.
John - We’re sorry to hear that you went with another solution, and hope that that works out better for you. Thanks for calling this situation to our attention.
