Cohesity DataProtect, SmartFiles and SaaS licensing covers the terms for software built on Cohesity’s own scale-out platform and for its hosted services. Customer-managed software is licensed under the Cohesity Software Terms of Use (the EULA), with use rights set by the Scope of License Terms. SaaS is licensed under the SaaS Terms of Service, with use rights set by the Scope of SaaS Offerings.[2][1][3] The Software Terms grant “a personal, revocable, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive right to use Software … subject to payment of the relevant fees, the Agreement (including the Scope of License Terms and the Documentation), and all applicable capacity, or other limitations specified in writing”. They also limit the customer’s Territory to the country in which it is located.[2] Catalog: Territory is the customer’s country.
Editions
Customer-managed Software Services
Part B of the Scope of License Terms covers four customer-managed Software Services: DataProtect, Replica, SmartFiles and Archive. A feature table shows what each one includes.[1] All four include web-scale scalability, multi-tenancy, non-disruptive upgrades, DataLock, AES-256 encryption, the global management features and deployment on certified appliances, public cloud, virtualized or edge sites. The table differs in the following areas:[1]
| Capability | DataProtect | Replica | SmartFiles | Archive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File and object Views (shares) | For backup purposes only | Not included | Included | Uniprotocol (NFS, SMB or S3) |
| Application-aware backup (Oracle, SQL, NoSQL, VMs, SAP, Kubernetes, NAS, physical, Exchange, M365) and CDP | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Outgoing replication | Included | Not included | Included | Included |
| Instant Mass Restore | Included | Included | Not included | Not included |
| SmartFiles quotas, external NAS tiering, ClamAV antivirus, Varonis connector | Not included | Not included | Included | Not included |
| CloudArchive and CloudRetrieve | Included | Not included | Included | Not included |
| CloudTier | Add-on | Not included | Add-on | Not included |
| CloudSpin, CloudArchive Direct, Cloud Snapshot Manager | Included | Not included | Not included | Not included |
| Tenable Cyberscan | BYOL | BYOL | BYOL | BYOL |
Marketplace applications and other add-ons need their own Entitlement. Add-ons marked with an asterisk are included for now but “may at some future point require a separate Entitlement”. “BYOL” means the feature licence must be bought from the third party.[1] Catalog: Software Service features differ by DataProtect, Replica, SmartFiles and Archive.
Cohesity Data Cloud
The Cohesity Data Cloud (CDC) bundles let one capacity purchase cover either product line. Each TB of CDC Core “Entitles Customer to 1TB of Data protection capability using either DataProtect or NetBackup”. CDC Enterprise adds 1 TB per TB of Threat Protection, Data Classification and Recovery Agent, all delivered as SaaS. These additional capabilities are “Not available on NetBackup; only available on DataProtect”. Licensing is “on a back end, capacity-limited per-TB basis”, and Cohesity may change how the capabilities are delivered.[1] Catalog: Cohesity Data Cloud Core; Cohesity Data Cloud Enterprise; Cohesity Data Cloud TB can be used on DataProtect or NetBackup.
Gaia
Cohesity Gaia is sold in two forms. Gaia Self-Managed (Gaia On-Prem) requires active Entitlements to customer-managed DataProtect and Helios Self-Managed. It may run only on Nvidia GPU hardware certified by Cohesity, and each GPU needs a Gaia GPU licence. On written request, at most monthly, the customer must report usage and the number of GPUs.[1] The SaaS form is limited by the SKU, for example by index storage capacity, number of generative answers or regions. It requires both Gaia Indexing and Gaia LLM Entitlements, and an Entitlement to Cohesity M365 DataProtect delivered as a Service.[3] Catalog: Gaia Self-Managed needs DataProtect, Helios and per-GPU licences.
SaaS services
| Service | Meter | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| DataProtect delivered as a Service: M365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Jira, Confluence, Okta | User | Pooled data allowance per User (SKUs SAAS-M365-CORE-FAIRUSE, SAAS-GWS-CORE-FAIRUSE, SAAS-SFDC-CORE, SAAS-JIRA-CORE, SAAS-OKTA-CORE, SAAS-CONFLUENCE-CORE) |
| Capacity-limited SaaS | Aggregate TBs on the SKU | Optionally with consumption pricing |
| Cohesity Gaia | Index storage, generative answers | No grace period |
| FortKnox for NetBackup (Warm, Cold) | Back-End Terabyte per month | Requires a separately licensed backup product |
| Alta SaaS Protection | Per user per connector; Teams Chats per message unit | Storage allocation per user |
Sources: Scope of SaaS Offerings; FortKnox for NetBackup terms; Alta SaaS Protection Service Description.[3][5][6]
Metrics
- Capacity-limited TB. A licence or subscription “may be limited to a certain capacity specified in a SKU (such as an aggregate number of TBs)”.[1]
- User (Cohesity Cloud Services). “a unique, actively-licensed individual user/subscriber for whom application data is backed up … during a given billing period”.[3]
- Back-End Terabyte. “the total aggregate amount of storage in terabytes”, with one terabyte equal to 1,024 GB.[5]
- Index storage. “the highest point of capacity consumed (in GBs or TBs) in the applicable vector database at any time during a calendar month”.[3]
- Nvidia GPU for Gaia Self-Managed.[1]
- Core Identity for Semperis offerings resold by Cohesity. The quantities of Core, Non-Core and total Users “must accurately represent Customer’s environment”.[1]
Counting / floors
Capacity per cluster
Capacity-limited customer-managed licences are pooled per cluster. The capacity “may be used across any number of nodes contained in a single Cohesity cluster”.[1] The terms do not say how capacity is pooled across several clusters. A licence position therefore follows the capacity stated on each SKU. Catalog: Capacity pools across nodes of one cluster.
Users and data allowances
For SaaS sold per User, “Usage” includes “the Customer’s highest number of Users concurrently consuming an Entitled Service during a specified period of measure”, or the Subscription Period if no period is set.[3] Each User licence carries a data allowance. Where the SKU does not state one, the allowances are:[3]
| SKU | Service Feature | Data allowance per User |
|---|---|---|
| SAAS-M365-CORE-FAIRUSE | M365 | 300 GB |
| SAAS-GWS-CORE-FAIRUSE | Google Workspace | 300 GB |
| SAAS-SFDC-CORE | Salesforce | 50 GB |
| SAAS-JIRA-CORE | Atlassian Jira | 50 GB |
| SAAS-OKTA-CORE | Okta | 500 MB |
| SAAS-CONFLUENCE-CORE | Atlassian Confluence | 50 GB |
Allowances are pooled at account level within each Service Feature, and more pooled storage is bought only by adding Users. Backing up groups, sites or teams requires everyone with access to them to be a licensed User. A User from an earlier billing period who is not backed up in the current one becomes an “Inactive User”. Unpaid M365 and Google Workspace evaluations are capped at 200 Users.[3] Catalog: SaaS per-User data allowance is pooled per Service Feature.
Alta SaaS Protection, a Veritas-heritage service, counts differently. Each connector type is metered per user with a storage allocation: 20 GB for the Microsoft 365 Suite and Google Workspace, and 10 GB for single Microsoft 365 workloads, Salesforce, Box and Slack. In the Microsoft 365 Suite, a user counts once across Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online and Teams. Teams Chats is metered per message unit retrieved through the Teams Export API.[6]
Peaks, overages and consumption
FortKnox for NetBackup measures BETB as “the highest amount of storage Customer consumed within the Service at any point during the month”. Usage above the contracted quantity must be cured by paying overages and placing an order.[5] Some subscriptions use consumption pricing. Under consumption pricing with commit, the customer pays in arrears after each billing period “the specified minimum commit plus any Overages”.[3] Gaia has no grace period. Unused Gaia Entitlements “expire at the end of the Subscription Period and will not carry forward”.[3] Catalog: FortKnox BETB is the monthly peak; overages must be ordered; Gaia SaaS has no grace period and unused entitlements expire.
Virtualization & partitioning
Hardware and portability
Customer-managed Software is not counted per host, socket or VM. Its licence type decides where it may run:[1]
- A perpetual license lasts “for the life of the Hardware on which it is originally installed” and is not portable to new hardware without written permission. The Software Terms define “Perpetual” the same way.[2]
- A subscription “is freely portable to/from Hardware certified by Cohesity for use with the applicable Software”.
- Entitlements bundled with DataPlatform licences count as licences and are not portable, though this does not apply to subscriptions.
The General Terms forbid use on “any hardware, firmware, virtual/cloud environment or other configuration not certified by Cohesity”.[7] Support covers Software only on certified hardware, firmware and operating system configurations.[9] Catalog: Perpetual licence is tied to the original hardware; Subscriptions are portable across certified hardware.
After a subscription expires
When a customer-managed subscription expires and is not renewed, Cohesity provides a free “software pathway” to restore from snapshots taken during the subscription. On a Cohesity Platform this lasts for the remaining life of the platform; for other Software it lasts at least twelve months. No new data may be written or backed up. Global search is unavailable, but file, drive and VM-level recovery remains. Without Platform Support, restores are at the customer’s risk.[1] These terms do not cover Cohesity SaaS. For SaaS, access ends on the last day of the Subscription Period, followed by a 30-day Retrieval Period (seven days for evaluations). After that Cohesity may delete Customer Content and charge for usage during the retrieval period, such as ingress and egress fees.[4] FortKnox access ends immediately on expiry, and decommissioned data may be deleted after 30 days.[5] Catalog: Restore pathway after a Cohesity subscription expires; SaaS data retrieval period is 30 days.
Cloud / BYOL
Customer-managed DataProtect, Replica, SmartFiles and Archive list public cloud and virtualized deployments as supported environments. The same capacity Entitlement applies there, subject to the certified-configuration restriction.[1][7] SaaS may be “supplied using third-party infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure”.[4] FortKnox for NetBackup is a hosted, air-gapped storage service in the public cloud. The customer needs a separate licence for a backup product that supports it.[5] Alta SaaS Protection runs in Microsoft Azure. Its extra data backup option needs the customer’s own cloud subscription unless the Azure blob option is bought.[6]
Programs
- Cohesity Data Cloud bundles: back-end capacity usable on DataProtect or NetBackup.[1]
- Consumption pricing with commit: minimum commit plus overages, billed in arrears.[3]
- Lifecycle: major Cohesity software releases are generally supported for 18 months from release. Hardware platforms have announced End of Sale and End of Life dates.[8] Catalog: Major Cohesity releases supported for 18 months.
Out of scope
This article does not cover NetBackup software (see Cohesity NetBackup licensing), Cohesity hardware warranties, or DSPM powered by Cyera, which the Scope of License Terms place under Cyera’s own terms.[1] Audit, renewal and support rules common to all products are in Cohesity general terms, audit and renewals.