Platform Support

Make sure platforms that you plan to use for various operations are supported.

Note

The information on this page is valid as of the date of the last page update.

Veeam Backup & Replication supports the following VMware vSphere platforms.

Virtual Infrastructure

Specification

Requirement

Platform

  • vSphere 8.0 (up to 8.0 U11)
  • vSphere 7.0 (up to 7.0 U3)
  • vSphere 6.x
  • Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE)

For more information on GCVE support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions

For more information on IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • Microsoft Azure VMware Solution (AVS)

For more information on AVS support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

For more information on Oracle Cloud VMware Solutions support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • VMware Cloud on AWS

For more information on VMware Cloud on AWS support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • VMware Cloud on Dell

For more information on VMware Cloud on Dell support, see this Veeam KB article.

  • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

This platform is supported as individual VMware software components. VMware components listed on this page can be part of VCF. For the information on the correspondence of VMware components to the VCF version, see this VMware KB article.

Hypervisor

  • ESXi 8.0 (up to 8.0 U11)
  • ESXi 7.0 (up to 7.0 U3)
  • ESXi 6.x

Free ESXi is not supported. Veeam Backup & Replication leverages vSphere and vStorage APIs that are disabled by VMware in free ESXi.

Management Server
(optional)

  • vCenter Server 8.0 (optional) (up to 8.0 U11)
  • vCenter Server 7.0 (optional) (up to 7.0 U3)
  • vCenter Server 6.x (optional)

1 This version requires Veeam Backup & Replication 12 P20230412 (build 12.0.0.1420 P20230412). For more information, see this Veeam KB article.

Veeam Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

The following infrastructure requirements apply only when you protect VMs with Continuous Data Protection (CDP):

  • The maximum number of disks per ESXi host is 500.
  • Backup server, VMware CDP proxies, vCenter Server and ESXi hosts must be able to resolve each other DNS names.
  • VMware Cloud on AWS is not supported.

For more information on Veeam CDP, its requirements and limitations, see Continuous Data Protection (CDP).

VMs

Specification

Requirement

Virtual Hardware

  • All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including 62 TB VMDK.
  • Virtual machines with virtual NVDIMM devices, with virtual disks engaged in SCSI bus sharing or residing on PMem datastores are not supported for host-based backup, because VMware does not support snapshotting such VMs. To protect such VMs, use agent-based backup.
  • RDM virtual disks in physical mode, independent disks, and disks connected through in-guest iSCSI initiator are not supported for host-based backup, and are skipped from processing automatically. If backup of these disks is required, use agent-based backup.

Network shares and mount points targeted to 3rd party storage devices are also skipped as these volumes/disks are not visible in the VM configuration file.

RDM virtual disks in virtual mode are supported to create backups based on VMware Changed Block Tracking technology, although there are some restrictions on the virtual disk restore operation. To learn more about them, see Restoring Virtual Disks.

OS

  • All operating systems supported by VMware.
  • Guest processing (which includes application-aware processing and indexing) is supported for Microsoft Windows 2008/Windows Vista or later except Nano Server, due to the absence of VSS framework.
  • Guest processing (which includes application-aware processing and indexing) is supported for 32- bit and 64-bit versions of the following Linux operating systems:
  • CentOS 7.x
  • Debian 10.0 to 11.0
  • Oracle Linux 7 (UEK3) to 9 (UEK R7)
  • Oracle Linux 7 to 9 (RHCK)
  • RHEL 7.0 to 9.1
  • SLES 12 SP4 or later, 15 SP1 or later
  • Ubuntu: 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, and 22.04 LTS

Note that persistent agent components can be installed only on 64-bit versions of these Linux operating systems.

Software

  • For Linux operating systems, GLIBC 2.12 or later. GLIBC is used for the following operations: application-aware processing, file-level restore to Linux guest OS, installing persistent agent components, and adding VM as a managed server.
  • VMware Tools (optional, recommended). VMware Tools are required for the following operations: application-aware processing, file-level restore from Microsoft Windows guest OS, and SureBackup testing functions.
  • Open VM Tools (OVT, optional). Open VM Tools are a set of services and modules used by VMware for interaction with VMs running Linux or other VMware supported Unix-like guest operating systems.
  • All latest OS service packs and patches (required for application-aware processing).

VMware Cloud Director

Specification

Requirement

VMware Cloud Director

VMware Cloud Director 10.1.x to 10.4.x

Note that if your backup server is based on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 or an earlier version, VMware Cloud Director servers cannot be added or used.

 

Guest OS File Restore

OS

Supported File Systems

Microsoft Windows

  • FAT, FAT32
  • NTFS
  • ReFS (ReFS is supported only if Veeam Backup & Replication is installed on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or later)

Windows file-level restore to original location is supported for Microsoft Windows 2008/Windows Vista or later except Nano Server.

Linux

  • ext2, ext3, ext4
  • ReiserFS
  • JFS
  • XFS
  • Btrfs
  • NTFS

DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Devices) are not supported.

BSD

UFS, UFS2

Mac

HFS, HFS+ (volumes up to 2 TB)

Micro Focus OES

NSS

AD-enabled NSS volumes on Open Enterprise Server 2015 are supported. Besides restore of standard file and folder permissions, restore of NSS trustee rights on files and folders is supported.

File-level restore is supported for the following OSes:

  • Open Enterprise Server (OES) versions 2015(SP1), 2018(SP1-SP3)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP1-SP4 with OES11(SP1-SP3)
  • NetWare 6.5 (only restore to a new location is supported)

Solaris

  • UFS
  • ZFS (except any pool versions of Oracle Solaris)

The helper appliance uses module ZFSonLinux version 2.1.5. For this reason, Veeam Backup & Replication supports only those versions of pools and features that are available in ZFSonLinux version 2.1.5.

 

For other requirements and limitations of guest OS file restore, see Requirements and Limitations.

File Servers

Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup of files and folders from the file servers managed by the following operating systems:

NAS Backup Support

Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup of file shares from the following sources:

Consider the following requirements and limitations:

In NFS settings of the source file share, you must explicitly specify what servers will have access to the file share.

  • SMB file share must run on SMB version 1.x, 2.x or 3.x.
  • To support the VSS for SMB File Shares feature, make sure that requirements listed in this Veeam KB article are met.
  • To correctly back up SACL (Ownership) files and folders from the SMB file share and restore them:
  1. When you are specifying access settings for the SMB file share, select the This share requires access credentials check box.
  2. Make sure that the account you use to access the file share is either added to the Backup Operators group or has the SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege privileges in Windows Server on the file share.

For more information on NAS backup, see NAS Backup Support.

Network

Consider the following requirements and limitations: