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

System Requirements

The protected Linux-based endpoint must meet requirements listed in the table below.

System Requirements Note:

The following system requirements apply to Veeam Agent for Linux 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.

Specification	Requirement
Hardware	CPU: x86-64 processor (i386 or later). 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. For virtual machines: Only full virtualization type is supported. Containers and paravirtualized instances are not supported. Oracle VM virtual machines are supported with limitations.
OS	Linux kernel is supported from version 2.6.32 up to version 5.7.191. Both 64-bit and 32-bit versions (if applicable) of the following distributions2 are supported: Debian 8.0 – 10.43 Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 19.10, 20.043 RHEL 6.0 – 8.24 CentOS 6.0 – 8.24 Oracle Linux 6 – 8.2 (RHCK)3 Oracle Linux 6 (starting from UEK R1) – Oracle Linux 8.0 (up to UEK R6)3 SLES 11 SP4, 12 SP1 – 15 SP1 SLES for SAP 11 SP4, 12 SP1 – 15 SP1 Fedora 30 – 323 openSUSE Leap 15.2 openSUSE Tumbleweed3 1 As long as you use kernels supplied by your distribution. Consider the following limitations: Fedora is supported up to kernel 5.7.7, inclusive. openSUSE Tumbleweed is supported up to kernel 5.7.7, inclusive. Linux kernel 2.6.32-754.6.3 in CentOS / RHEL and Oracle Linux (RHCK) is not supported. 2 Consider the following: Only GA versions that have been released before the current version of Veeam Agent for Linux are supported. 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 veeamsnap kernel module has experimental support status. For details about experimental support, see this Veeam KB article. 3 Pre-built binary veeamsnap kernel module packages are not compatible with these distributions. Use the dkms packages instead. 4 Consider the following: Pre-built binary veeamsnap kernel module packages require kernel 2.6.32-131.0.15 or later for CentOS / RHEL 6 (excluding 2.6.32-279.el6.i686) and kernel 3.10.0-123 or later for CentOS / RHEL 7.0 – 7.7. RHEL / CentOS / Oracle Linux (RHCK) 6.10 and 7.7 are supported up to certain kernel versions. For details, see this Veeam KB article.
File System	Veeam Agent for Linux supports consistent snapshot-based data backup for the following file systems1: Btrfs (for OSes that run Linux kernel version from 3.16 up to 5.7.19) 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. Data that resides on other file systems and volumes (including NFS and SMB shares) can be backed up using the snapshot-less mode. For details, see Snapshot-Less File-Level Backup. 1 Consider the following: Veeam Agent for Linux does not back up volumes that reside on USB devices and SD cards. Total size of all file systems included in a file-level backup must not exceed 128 TB. Size of a file included in a file-level backup must not exceed 16 TB. Each volume included in a backup must have a unique UUID. The veeamsnap module provides 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 machines used as cluster nodes is not supported (that includes backup of machines that use shared disks, clustered file systems or clustered LVM). Certain limitations for EMC PowerPath configuration apply. To learn more, see this Veeam KB article. BFQ I/O scheduler is not supported. Sparse files are not supported. Veeam Agent backs up and restores sparse files as regular files.
Software	Important! Linux user account used to work with Veeam Agent for Linux must have the /bin/bash shell set as the default shell. Protected computer must have the following components installed: dkms1 gcc1 make1 perl1 linux-headers2 (for Debian-based systems) kernel-headers1, 2 (for RedHat-based systems) kernel-devel1, 2 (for RedHat-based systems) kernel-uek-devel (for Oracle Linux with UEK) libudev libacl libattr lvm2 libfuse libncurses53 dmidecode4 libmysqlclient5 libpq56 python37 efibootmgr (for UEFI-based systems) isolinux (for Debian-based systems) syslinux (for RedHat-based systems) btrfs-progs (for backup of Btrfs file system)8 1 Not required for CentOS, RHEL and SLES distributions if a pre-built binary veeamsnap package is to be installed. For details, see Installing Veeam Agent for Linux. 2 Package version varies according to the Linux kernel version that you use. 3 For openSUSE and SLES distributions, either of the following packages is required: libncurses5 or libncurses6. 4 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 will generate it automatically. 5 A package with the MySQL database client library 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. 6 A package with the PostgreSQL database client library is required to process PostgreSQL database system located on the Veeam Agent server. For details, see Backup of PostgreSQL Database. 7 Consider the following: Required for CentOS, RHEL 7.0 and later if a pre-built binary kmod-veeamsnap package is to be installed. If the python3 package is not available for your Linux distribution, you can use the python3-setuptools package or another package that represents Python 3 in your Linux distribution. For instructions on how to install such packages, refer to the official information resources for your Linux distribution. 8 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:

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 10 or later backup repository (including deduplication appliances).
Veeam Cloud Connect 10 or later cloud repository.

Network

Consider the following:

Veeam Agent for Linux should be able to establish a direct IP connection to the Veeam Backup & Replication server. Thus, 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 addresses.