System Requirements

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

NOTE

The following system requirements apply to the following Veeam Agent for Linux configuration:

  • Veeam Agent for Linux version is 6.
  • Veeam Agent for Linux is operating in the standalone mode.

To learn about system requirements for Veeam Agent managed by Veeam Backup & Replication, see the System Requirements section in the Veeam Agent Management Guide.

  • Veeam Agent for Linux is installed with the veeam-libs, veeam,and Veeam kernel module packages.

To learn about system requirements for nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux, see System Requirements for Nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux.

To learn about system requirements for nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux on Power, see System Requirements for Nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux on Power.

 

 

Specification

Requirement

Hardware

Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the supported hardware.

CPU: x86 or x64.

Memory: 1 GB RAM or more. Memory consumption varies depending on the backup type and the total amount of backed-up data.

Disk Space: 100 MB free disk space for product installation.

Network: 10 Mbps or faster network connection to a backup target.

System firmware: BIOS or UEFI.

Disk layout: MBR or GPT.

OS

Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the list of supported OSes.

[For Veeam Agent for Linux version 6.1] Linux kernel version 2.6.32 to version 6.6 is supported.

[For Veeam Agent for Linux version 6.0] Linux kernel version 2.6.32 to version 6.3 is supported.

Veeam Agent supports the 64-bit versions of the following distributions1:

  • Debian 10.13 – 12.2
  • Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 22.10, 23.04 and 23.10
  • RHEL 6.4 – 8.9, 9.0 – 9.3
  • CentOS 7
  • Oracle Linux 6 – 8.9, 9.0 – 9.3 (RHCK)
  • Oracle Linux 6 (starting from UEK R2) – Oracle Linux 8 (up to UEK R6)
  • Oracle Linux 8 (UEK R7) — for information on installation, see this Veeam KB article.
  • Oracle Linux 9 (up to 5.15.0-200.131.27.el9uek)
  • SLES 12 SP4, 12 SP5, 15 SP1 – 15 SP5
  • SLES for SAP 12 SP4, 12 SP5, 15 SP1 – 15 SP5
  • Fedora 36, 37, 38 and 39
  • openSUSE Leap 15.3 – 15.5
  • openSUSE Tumbleweed has an experimental support status.

Veeam Agent supports 32-bit versions for RHEL 6 and Oracle Linux 6 distributions only.

1 Starting from version 6.1, Veeam Agent for Linux supports the following Linux distributions: Debian 12.1 and 12.2, Ubuntu 23.10, Fedora 39, RHEL 8.9 and 9.3, Oracle Linux 8.9 and 9.3.

File System

Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the list of supported file systems.

Veeam Agent for Linux supports consistent snapshot-based data backup for the following file systems:

  • BTRFS (for OSes that run Linux kernel 3.16 or later)
  • Ext 2/3/4
  • F2FS
  • FAT16
  • FAT32
  • HFS
  • HFS+
  • JFS
  • NILFS2
  • NTFS
  • ReiserFS
  • XFS

The supported file system (except for BTRFS) can reside on a simple volume or LVM2 volume; volumes protected with encryption software such as dm-crypt are supported. BTRFS is supported only if it resides directly on a physical device with no additional abstraction layers (such as LVM, software RAID, dm-crypt and so on) below or above it.

Other file systems, file systems that are not located on logical volumes, as well as network file systems like NFS or SMB shares can be backed up using the snapshot-less mode only. For details, see Snapshot-Less File-Level Backup.

Software

Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the list of supported components.

Protected computer must have the following components installed:

  • dkms
  • gcc
  • make
  • perl
  • linux-headers (for Debian-based systems)
  • kernel-headers (for RedHat-based systems)
  • kernel-devel (for RedHat-based systems)
  • kernel-uek-devel (for Oracle Linux with UEK)
  • libudev
  • libacl
  • libattr
  • lvm2
  • libfuse2 (FUSE libraries for Debian-based and SLES-based systems)
  • fuse-libs (FUSE libraries for RedHat-based and Fedora systems)
  • libncurses5
  • dmidecode
  • libmysqlclient
  • libpq5
  • python3
  • efibootmgr (for UEFI-based systems)
  • isolinux (for Debian-based systems)
  • syslinux (for RedHat-based systems)
  • btrfs-progs (for backup of BTRFS file system)
  • mksquashfs (for custom Veeam Recovery Media)
  • unsquashfs (for custom Veeam Recovery Media)
  • wget (for custom Veeam Recovery Media)
  • xorriso (for custom Veeam Recovery Media with EFI support)
  • tar (for file system indexing, log export and rotation)
  • gzip (for file system indexing, log export and rotation)

Considerations and Limitations

Hardware

  • Devices managed by Veritas Volume Manager are not supported.

OS

Consider the following limitations:

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 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:

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

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

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.

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.

  • 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

System Requirements IMPORTANT

Linux user account used to work with Veeam Agent for Linux must have the /bin/bash shell set as the default shell.

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.
  • [For Veeam Agent for Linux version 6.1] 12.1 or later backup repository (including deduplication appliances).
  • [For Veeam Agent for Linux version 6.0] 12.0 or later backup repository (including deduplication appliances).
  • Veeam Cloud Connect 12.0 or later backup repository.

Important

Consider the following about backup repositories:

  • [For local storage] A backup repository should be created on a separate volume from the volume that contains data you plan to back up.
  • [For Veeam backup repository] Backup repositories with enabled KMS encryption are not supported.

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.