System Requirements

The protected Linux computer must meet requirements listed in the table below.

Considerations and Limitations

Hardware

• For virtual machines, only full virtualization type is supported. Oracle VM virtual machines are supported with limitations. Virtual I/O (VirtIO) devices have experimental support status. Other containers and paravirtualized instances are not supported; backup of such devices may result in corruption of the source file system — for more information, see this Veeam KB article.

• Devices managed by Veritas Volume Manager are not supported.

OS

• Linux kernel version 2.6.32 to version 6.10 is supported as long as you use kernels supplied by your distribution.

Consider the following limitations:

• Fedora 38, 39 and openSUSE Tumbleweed are supported up to kernel 6.10.
• Linux kernel 2.6.32-754.6.3 in CentOS / RHEL and Oracle Linux (RHCK) is not supported.

• Only GA versions of the supported distributions that have been released before the current version of Veeam Agent for Linux are supported.

If a new version of a supported Linux distribution is released after the release of the current version of Veeam Agent, Veeam Agent may require a patch to support this new OS version. For details on Veeam Agent compatibility with Linux OS versions, see this Veeam KB article. Customers with a valid contract can request a patch from Veeam Support; for other customers, the support of the new Linux distribution will be provided with the next release of Veeam Agent.

• For the following distributions, we recommend installing Veeam kernel modules from pre-built binary packages provided by Veeam:

• CentOS 7
• RHEL 6.4 – 9.4
• Rocky Linux 9.3 and 9.4
• AlmaLinux 9.3 and 9.4
• SLES 12 SP4, 12 SP5 15 SP1 – 15 SP6
• SLES for SAP 12 SP4, 12 SP5 15 SP1 – 15 SP6
• openSUSE Leap 15.3 – 15.6

For other supported distributions, use the dkms packages instead of the pre-built binary packages with Veeam kernel modules.

Consider the following about Veeam kernel modules from pre-built binary packages:

• Pre-built binary veeamsnap kernel module packages require kernel 2.6.32-131.0.15 or later for RHEL 6 (excluding 2.6.32-279.el6.i686) and 3.10.0-123 or later for CentOS / RHEL 7.0 – 7.9.
• Pre-built binary blksnap kernel module packages require kernel 5.3.18 or later.

For details on installing Veeam Agent on every supported distribution, see Installing Veeam Agent for Linux.

• To ensure proper functioning of the Veeam kernel module, verify that your system does not have any of the following modules installed: hcpdriver, snapapi26, snapapi, snapper, dattobd, dattobd-dkms, dkms-dattobd, cdr or cxbf.

• The Linux OS must be set up to receive software updates from the default repositories enabled in the OS after installation.
• For cloud-based installations that use customized kernels (such as Linux distributions deployed from AWS Marketplace or Azure Marketplace), the Veeam kernel module has experimental support status. For details about experimental support, see this Veeam KB article.
• RHEL, CentOS and Oracle Linux (RHCK) are supported up to certain kernel versions. For details, see this Veeam KB article.

• Ubuntu with Linux kernel for KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is not supported. For the list of linux-kvm kernels for Ubuntu, see Ubuntu documentation.

• [Oracle Linux (UEK) 6.6 – 7.4] If the operating system has the FIPS mode enabled, you must sign the DKMS Veeam kernel module. For more information on automating the process of signing DKMS kernel modules, see Linux documentation.

File System

• File-level backup has the following limitations:

• Total size of all file systems must not exceed 216 TiB. This limitation applies to all file systems where files you plan to back up are located.
• Size of a file included in a file-level backup must not exceed 16 TB.
• Name of a file must not be larger than 254 bytes.

Keep in mind that characters that you can use in the file name may be encoded in 2 bytes or more.

• To store volume snapshots, the blksnap kernel module requires an Ext4, BTRFS or XFS file system.
• Veeam Agent supports backup of extended attributes with the following limitations:

• Veeam Agent backs up extended attributes only with the following public namespaces: system, security, trusted, and user.
• All extended attribute names and values of a file must not exceed 4096 bytes (size of a default ext4 file system block). Veeam Agent does not back up attributes exceeding the limit.

For the kernel version 4.13 or later, if a value of extended attribute exceeds the limit, Veeam Agent uses the ea_inodes feature. Backups created using the ea_inodes feature cannot be mounted on kernel versions up to 4.12.

• Each volume included in a backup must have a unique UUID.
• Veeam kernel module provide a RAM-based changed block tracking (CBT) mechanism. Every time the module is unloaded or Veeam Agent for Linux computer is rebooted, CBT data is reset. As a result, Veeam Agent reads the entire data added to the backup scope to detect what blocks have changed since the last job session, and incremental backup requires greater time.

• Backup of computers used as cluster nodes can be performed by Veeam Agent for Linux in the Snapshot-Less File-Level Backup mode only.

Backup of computers used as cluster nodes can be also performed by nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux. For details, see System Requirements for Nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux.

• Certain limitations for Dell PowerPath configuration apply. To learn more, see this Veeam KB article.

• Backup of file and directory attributes (for example, a — append only, c — compressed, and so on) is not supported.

• Veeam Agent for Linux does not back up volumes that reside on USB devices and SD cards.
• Veeam Agent for Linux does not back up LVM snapshots.

• BFQ I/O scheduler is not supported.
• Sparse files are not supported. Veeam Agent backs up and restores sparse files as regular files.
• Backup of pseudo file systems, such as /proc, /sys, tmpfs, devfs and others, is not supported.
• During backup, network file systems are skipped unless explicitly included into the backup scope.
• Backup of BTRFS volumes and subvolumes with enabled file-system compression is not supported.

Software

• The following packages are not required for CentOS, RHEL and SLES distributions if a pre-built binary package with Veeam kernel module is to be installed.

• dkms
• gcc
• make
• perl
• kernel-headers (for RedHat-based systems)
• kernel-devel (for RedHat-based systems)

For details, see Installing Veeam Agent for Linux.

• Version of the following packages varies according to the Linux kernel version that you use:

• linux-headers (for Debian-based systems)
• kernel-headers (for RedHat-based systems)
• kernel-devel (for RedHat-based systems)

• kernel-uek-devel (for Oracle Linux systems with UEK)

• For openSUSE and SLES distributions, either of the following packages is required: libncurses5 or libncurses6.
• The dmidecode package is required for Veeam Agent management — a valid BIOS UUID must be obtainable either from dmidecode | grep -i uuid or from /sys/class/dmi/id/product_uuid. Each Veeam Agent that consumes a license installed in Veeam Backup & Replication must have a unique BIOS UUID. If a valid UUID cannot be obtained, Veeam Agent will generate it automatically.
• The libmysqlclient package is required to process MySQL database system located on the Veeam Agent server. For details, see Backup of MySQL Database. Package version varies according to the MySQL database system version that you use.
• The libpq5 package is required to process PostgreSQL database system located on the Veeam Agent server. For details, see Backup of PostgreSQL Database.
• The python3 package or another RPM package providing a /usr/bin/python3 binary is required for CentOS, RHEL 7.0 and later distributions if a pre-built binary Veeam kernel module package is to be installed.
• The btrfs-progs package version 3.16 or later is required.

Backup Source

Any file systems and devices that are accessible from the host OS. To learn about limitations, see File System.

Backup Target

Backup can be performed to the following types of storage:

• On-premises or cloud-based object storage.
• Local (internal) storage of the protected computer (not recommended).
• Direct attached storage (DAS), such as USB, eSATA or Firewire external drives.
• Network Attached Storage (NAS) able to represent itself as SMB (CIFS) or NFS share. Requires cifs-utils or nfs-utils packages to be installed on the Veeam Agent for Linux computer, depending on a network storage type.
• Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1 or later backup repository (including deduplication appliances).
• Veeam Cloud Connect 12.0 or later backup repository.

Network

Consider the following:

• If you back up to a repository managed by a Veeam backup server, Veeam Agent for Linux must be able to establish a direct IP connection to the Veeam Backup & Replication server. Veeam Agent for Linux cannot work with Veeam Backup & Replication that is located behind the NAT gateway.
• Domain names of the Veeam Agent computer, Veeam Backup & Replication server and other servers in the Veeam backup infrastructure must be resolvable into IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.