This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Platform Support

In this article

Veeam Backup & Replication provides support for the following versions of the VMware vSphere platform.

Virtual Infrastructure

Specification	Requirement
Platform	vSphere 6.0 vSphere 5.x vSphere 4.1
Hypervisor	ESXi 6.0 ESXi 5.x ESX(i) 4.1 Free ESXi is not supported. Veeam Backup & Replication leverages vSphere and vStorage APIs that are disabled by VMware in free ESXi.
Management Server (optional)	vCenter Server 6.0 (optional) vCenter Server 5.x (optional) vCenter Server 4.1 (optional)

Specification

Requirement

Platform

vSphere 6.0
vSphere 5.x
vSphere 4.1

Hypervisor

ESXi 6.0
ESXi 5.x
ESX(i) 4.1

Free ESXi is not supported. Veeam Backup & Replication leverages vSphere and vStorage APIs that are disabled by VMware in free ESXi.

Management Server
(optional)

vCenter Server 6.0 (optional)
vCenter Server 5.x (optional)
vCenter Server 4.1 (optional)

VMs

Specification	Requirement
Virtual Hardware	All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including 62TB VMDK. Virtual machines with disks engaged in SCSI bus sharing are not supported, because VMware does not support snapshotting such VMs. RDM virtual disks in physical mode, Independent disks, and disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported, and are skipped from processing automatically. Network shares and mount points targeted to 3rd party storage devices are also skipped as these volumes/disks are not visible in the VM configuration file. Veeam Backup & Replication does not process running VMs with PCI vSphere Direct Path I/O devices VMs due to VMware vSphere limitations. To process such VMs, you must power them off.
OS	All operating systems supported by VMware. Application-aware processing for Microsoft Windows 2003 SP1 and later.
Software	VMware Tools (optional). VMware Tools are required for the following operations: application-aware processing, file-level restore from Microsoft Windows guest OS and SureBackup testing functions. All latest OS service packs and patches (required for application-aware processing)

Specification

Requirement

Virtual Hardware

All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including 62TB VMDK.
Virtual machines with disks engaged in SCSI bus sharing are not supported, because VMware does not support snapshotting such VMs.
RDM virtual disks in physical mode, Independent disks, and disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported, and are skipped from processing automatically. Network shares and mount points targeted to 3rd party storage devices are also skipped as these volumes/disks are not visible in the VM configuration file.

Veeam Backup & Replication does not process running VMs with PCI vSphere Direct Path I/O devices VMs due to VMware vSphere limitations. To process such VMs, you must power them off.

All operating systems supported by VMware.
Application-aware processing for Microsoft Windows 2003 SP1 and later.

Software

VMware Tools (optional). VMware Tools are required for the following operations: application-aware processing, file-level restore from Microsoft Windows guest OS and SureBackup testing functions.
All latest OS service packs and patches (required for application-aware processing)

vCloud Director

Specification	Requirement
vCloud Director	vCloud Director 5.1, 5.5, 5.6, 8.0, 8.10 (optional). vCloud Director 8.10 is supported starting from Veeam Backup & Replication 9.0 Update 2.

File-Level Restore

OS	Supported File Systems
Microsoft Windows	FAT, FAT32 NTFS ReFS (ReFS is supported only if Veeam Backup & Replication is installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2).
Linux	ext2, ext3, ext4 ReiserFS JFS XFS Btrfs
BSD	UFS, UFS2
Mac	HFS, HFS+ (volumes up to 2 TB)
Novell OES	File-level restore is supported for Novell Open Enterprise Server (Novell OES). Novell NetWare is not supported (Veeam Backup & Replication may fail to detect NSS volumes). Restore of NSS file/folder permissions is not supported. Only 32-bit versions are supported. 32-bit NSS volumes with Active Directory support are not supported.
Solaris	UFS ZFS The FLR appliance uses module ZFSonLinux version 0.6.3. For this reason, Veeam Backup & Replication supports only those versions of pools and features that are available in ZFSonLinux version 0.6.3.

The multi-OS wizard works not only with basic disks, but also Linux LVM (Logical Volume Manager) and ZFS pools.

VM Guest OS Files Exclusion

Veeam Backup & Replication supports both basic and dynamic disks. Volumes on the dynamic disks must not be split — spanned, striped and other types of split volumes are not supported.