System Requirements for Nosnap Veeam Agent for Linux on Power

If you want to back up Linux computers running on IBM Power Systems, you can install Veeam Agent for Linux using the veeam-nosnap package for Linux on Power. This package allows Veeam Agent to operate without Veeam kernel module using the native file system snapshots instead.

Before you install Veeam Agent using the veeam-nosnap package for Linux on Power, 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 Veeam Agent for Linux on Power

If you plan to install Veeam Agent for Linux on Power, make sure the protected Linux computer meets the requirements listed in the table below. To learn about system requirements for Veeam Agent for Linux installed using Veeam kernel module package, see System Requirements.

Considerations and Limitations

OS

• Only GA versions of the supported distributions that have been released before the current version of Veeam Agent for Linux for Power 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 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 TiB.
• 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 machines used as cluster nodes:

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

• 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 hosted by LVM

• 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.
• Backup of BTRFS volumes and subvolumes with enabled file-system compression is not supported.

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 12.3 backup repository (including deduplication appliances).

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.