System Requirements for Nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux

You can install Veeam Agent for Linux using a veeam-nosnap package. This package allows Veeam Agent to operate without Veeam kernel module.

The veeam-nosnap package can be useful in the following cases:

You do not want to install kernel sources and compilers on your computer.
You want to use third-party tools to create data snapshots.
You want to perform bare metal restore, but Veeam Recovery Media does not work with your computer. In this case you can install the veeam-nosnap package on LiveCD of your choice and access the Veeam recovery UI.

You want to back up machines that are used as cluster nodes.

Before you install Veeam Agent using the veeam-nosnap package, consider the following limitations:

The RAM-based changed block tracking (CBT) mechanism is not supported. As a result, if you plan to back up a significant amount of data, the backup will require greater time.
Veeam Agent can create a snapshot of LVM logical volumes and BTRFS subvolumes. To back up data that resides on other file systems and volumes, you can use only file-level backup in the snapshot-less mode. For details, see Snapshot-Less File-Level Backup.
For a successful backup, Veeam Agent requires unallocated extents on volume groups.
For a successful bare metal restore, all disks of the Veeam Agent computer you want to restore must be available in the backup.

System Requirements for nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux

If you plan to use the veeam-nosnap package to install Veeam Agent, the protected Linux computer meet the requirements listed in the table below. To learn about system requirements for Veeam Agent installed using a Veeam kernel module package, see System Requirements.

Specification	Requirement
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. For more information, see RAM Requirements for Backup of Large Number of Files. 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	Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the list of supported OSes. Veeam Agent supports the 64-bit versions of the following distributions: Debian 10.13 – 12.6 Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 22.10, 23.04, 23.10 and 24.04 RHEL 6.4 – 9.4 CentOS 7 Oracle Linux 6 – 9.4 (RHCK) Oracle Linux 6 (starting from UEK R2) – Oracle Linux 9 (up to 5.15.0-209.161.7.2.el9uek) 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 openSUSE Tumbleweed has an experimental support status. For details about experimental support, see this Veeam KB article. Rocky Linux 9.3 and 9.4 AlmaLinux 9.3 and 9.4 Veeam Agent supports the 32-bit versions of the following distributions: RHEL 6 Oracle Linux 6 32-bit versions of other distributions are not supported.
File System	Important! Check considerations and limitations that apply to the list of the supported file systems. Veeam Agent for Linux supports consistent snapshot-based data backup for the following file systems: All supported file systems that are built on top of LVM logical volumes. BTRFS (for OSes that run Linux kernel 3.16 or later). 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. Supported file systems that are not located on logical volumes, other file systems and 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: libacl libattr lvm2 libfuse dmidecode 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

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. 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.

The Linux OS must be set up to receive software updates from the default repositories enabled in the OS after installation.

File System

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

LVM volumes encrypted with dm-crypt software are not supported.

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.

The amount of space required for LVM snapshots largely depends on the IO intensity. Generally, from 10% to 20% of the system’s occupied space should be enough for storing an LVM snapshot.

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.

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

Each volume included in a backup must have a unique UUID.

Consider the following about the backup of computers used as cluster nodes:

To back up data on local LVM volumes, you can use file-level backup or volume-level backup.

NOTE

Consider the following:

During volume-level backup, data from shared disks, clustered file systems or clustered LVM will not be backed up.
To perform volume-level backup, Veeam Agent for Linux will create an LVM snapshot, which may cause instability of the cluster or cluster software. This can happen due to the failover conditions configured for the cluster. However, if the cluster instability is caused by creation of an LVM snapshot only during backup, please contact Veeam support for assistance.

Backup of clustered file systems using a native file system snapshot is not supported. This includes snapshots created with the help of custom pre-job or post-job scripts.
The following objects can be backed up only by snapshot-less file-level backup:

Files on shared disks, clustered file systems or clustered LVM.

Files on local file systems that are not located on LVM logical volumes.

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

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.

Software

IMPORTANT

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

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 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 cloud 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:

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 or IPv6 addresses.