System Requirements for Linux Computers

Starting from Veeam Backup & Replication version 12.1, you can use Veeam Backup & Replication to manage Veeam Agent for Linux that was installed using a package with the Veeam kernel module dependency or using a nosnap package without dependency on the Veeam kernel module. On IBM Power Systems, Veeam Agent for Linux can be installed using a special nosnap package — Veeam Agent for Linux on Power.

Veeam kernel module is used for creating system snapshots. The nosnap version of Veeam Agent for Linux leverages the native snapshot capabilities of the supported file systems. For information on system requirements for nosnap versions of Veeam Agent for Linux, see System Requirements for Linux Computers (nosnap Veeam Agent).

Veeam Agent Computer (Veeam Kernel Module)

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 6.3, and starting from Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1, to version 6.6 is supported as long as you use kernels supplied by your distribution. Consider the following limitations:

• Fedora 39, openSUSE Tumbleweed are supported up to kernel 6.6.
• Ubuntu 23.10, Fedora 37 and 38, Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 are supported up to kernel 6.5.
• 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. To learn more about 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.

• 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 that are not in the list of supported OSes), the veeamsnap kernel module has an experimental support status.
• For backups of cloud machines running Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023, only file-level restore is supported.

• Automatic Veeam Agent deployment and upgrade from the Veeam backup console is not supported for the following distributions:

• Fedora
• openSUSE Tumbleweed

You need to install Veeam Agent for Linux directly on a target computer. To learn more, see the Installing Veeam Agent for Linux section in the Veeam Agent for Linux User Guide.

• Automatic upgrade from Veeam backup console is not supported for manually deployed Veeam Agents.
• RHEL, CentOS, and Oracle Linux (RHCK) are supported up to certain kernel versions. To learn more, 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.

File System

• 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.
• File-level backup has the following limitations:

• Total size of all file systems must not exceed 218 TB. 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. Snapshot file cannot be stored on multi-device BTRFS.

• 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 for Linux supports backup of extended attributes with the following limitations:

• Veeam Agent for Linux 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.
• 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.

• You cannot back up an entire system image or specific volumes of computers used as cluster nodes. Only snapshot-less file-level backup of cluster nodes is supported. That includes backup of computers that use shared disks, clustered file systems, or clustered LVM.

• Certain limitations for Dell 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 for Linux 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.

Software

• To install Veeam Agent for Linux packages on a target computer, Veeam Backup & Replication uses the default package manager of the Linux distribution running on this computer. During the installation process, the package manager checks whether all prerequisite software is available on the computer. If some of the required software components are missing, the package manager will attempt to install the missing packages from a software repository configured in the OS.
• 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)

To learn more, see the Installing Veeam Agent for Linux section in the Veeam Agent for Linux User Guide.

• 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 will generate it automatically.
• The libmysqlclient package is required to process MySQL database system located on the Veeam Agent server. 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.

• 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 kmod-veeamsnap package is to be installed.

• The btrfs-progs package version 3.16 or later is required.