This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.System Requirements
Make sure that servers that you plan to use as backup infrastructure components meet the system requirements listed below.
- Backup server
- Veeam Backup & Replication console
- Backup proxy server
- File proxy server
- Backup repository server
- Cache repository
- WAN accelerator
- Backup target
- Storage integration
- Tape server
- Tape
- Gateway server
- Mount server
- Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
- Supported Applications
- Veeam Explorers
Limitations and Recommendations
Coexistence with Mission-Critical Production Servers
We do not recommend to install Veeam Backup & Replication and its components on mission-critical machines in the production environment such as vCenter Server, Domain Controller, Microsoft Exchange Server, Small Business Server/ Windows Server Essentials and so on. If possible, install Veeam Backup & Replication and its components on dedicated machines. Backup infrastructure component roles can be co-installed.
Microsoft Windows Server Core
You can assign roles of a backup proxy, backup repository, WAN accelerator, Veeam Cloud Connect infrastructure components and tape infrastructure components to machines running Microsoft Windows Server Core.
Mind that you cannot install Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager on a machine running Microsoft Windows Server Core.
Domain Member
The machine on which you plan to install Veeam Backup & Replication does not necessarily need to be a domain member. However, if you plan to restore Microsoft Exchange items from the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager UI, you must install Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager on the domain member server from the Microsoft Active Directory forest in which Microsoft Exchange mailboxes are located.
All-in-One Installations
For all-in-one installations, you can subtract 2 GB of memory resources from each but one role. These 2 GB are allotted to the OS itself, assuming each component is installed on the dedicated server.
NAS Backup
We recommend to allocate 4 GB RAM for each of the following NAS backup components: backup repository, file proxy, cache repository. For all-in-one installations, make sure you allocate enough memory resources for all components at the same server.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor (4 cores recommended). Memory: 4 GB RAM plus 500 MB RAM for each concurrent job. Memory consumption varies according to number of VMs in the job, size of VM metadata, size of production infrastructure, and so on. Additionally, for users with tape installations (for file to tape jobs processing more than 1,000,000 files):
Disk Space: 5 GB1 for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 installation. 10 GB per 100 VM for guest file system catalog folder (persistent data). Additional free disk space for Instant VM Recovery cache folder (non-persistent data, at least 10 GB recommended). Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, and 1 Mbps or faster for offsite backup and replication. High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are supported. 1 Here and throughout this document GB is considered as 2^30 bytes, TB as 2^40 bytes. |
OS | Only 64-bit version of the following operating systems are supported1:
1 Running Veeam backup server or any of Veeam backup infrastructure components on Insider versions of Microsoft Windows OS (both Client and Server) is not supported. 2 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
Software | During setup, the system configuration check is performed to determine if all prerequisite software is available on the machine where you plan to install Veeam Backup & Replication. If some of the required software components are missing, the setup wizard will offer you to install missing software automatically. This refers to:
The following software must be installed manually:
If you plan to install Veeam Backup & Replication in the unattended mode using the command line interface, manually install all prerequisite software before that. For more information, see Installing Veeam Backup & Replication in Unattended Mode. |
SQL Database | Local or remote installation of the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server:
All editions of Microsoft SQL Server are supported. The usage of Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition is limited by the database size up to 10 Gb. If you plan to have larger databases, use other editions of Microsoft SQL Server. Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager configuration databases can be deployed in Microsoft SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups. For more information, see this Veeam KB article. 1 For machines running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or later. |
Mind the following:
- If you plan to back up VMs running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 or later, and Data Deduplication is enabled for some VM volumes, it is recommended that you deploy the Veeam Backup & Replication console and mount server on a machine running same or later version of Microsoft Windows Server with Data Deduplication feature enabled. Otherwise, some types of restore operations for these VMs (such as Microsoft Windows File-Level Recovery) may fail.
- Due to its limitations, Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition can only be used for evaluation purposes or in case of a small-scale production environment. For environments with a lot of VMs, it is necessary to install a fully functional commercial version of Microsoft SQL Server.
For more information, see Backup Server.
Veeam Backup & Replication Console
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor. Memory: 2 GB RAM Disk Space: 500 MB for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 installation. Network: 1 Mbps connection to the backup server. High latency and low bandwidth impact user interface responsiveness. |
OS | Only 64-bit version of the following operating systems are supported:
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
Software |
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For more information, see Backup & Replication Console.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor with minimum of 2 cores (vCPUs), plus 1 core (vCPU) for each additional concurrent task. Using faster processors improves data processing performance. For more information, see Limitation of Concurrent Tasks. Memory: 2 GB RAM plus 200 MB for each concurrent task. Using faster memory (DDR3/DDR4) improves data processing performance. Disk Space: 300 MB plus 50 MB for each concurrent task. Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, and 1 Mbps or faster for off-site backup and replication. High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are supported. |
OS | 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported:
64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions are supported2. Note that bash shell, SSH, and Perl are required. Check the full list of required Perl modules in this Veeam KB article.
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. 2 Linux distributions are not supported for file proxy. |
For more information on the backup proxy, its requirements and limitations, see Backup Proxy.
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To protect VMs running on ESXi 5.5 and newer with Microsoft Windows, you must deploy backup proxies on machines running a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows. VDDK 5.5 and newer does not support 32-bit versions of Microsoft Windows. |
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor (minimum 2 cores or vCPUs). Using multi-core processors improves data processing performance and allows for more tasks to be processed concurrently. Memory: 4 GB RAM for each concurrent task. Using faster memory (DDR3/DDR4) improves data processing performance. Disk Space: 300 MB. Network: High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are supported. |
OS | 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported:
File proxies running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 or later support the VSS for SMB File Shares feature. To use it, make sure that all requirements listed in this Veeam KB article are met. 1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information on the file proxy, see File Proxy in NAS Backup Support.
These requirements also apply to mount servers (if separate from the repository server), gateway servers for file share and deduplicating appliance-based repositories, and cache repository servers (64-bit OS only).
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86 processor (x86-64 recommended). Memory: 4 GB RAM, plus up to 2 GB RAM (32-bit OS) or up to 4 GB RAM (64-bit OS) for each concurrently processed machine or file share (depending on machine size, number of disks and backup chain length). For more information, see Limitation of Concurrent Tasks. Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, and 1 Mbps or faster for off-site backup and replication. High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are supported. |
OS | Both 32-bit and 64-bit (recommended) versions of the following operating systems are supported:
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information, see Backup Repository.
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If you plan to use a Microsoft Windows backup repository with Data Deduplication, make sure that you set up the Microsoft Windows server correctly. For more information, see this Veeam KB article. |
The following storage types can be used as a cache repository for NAS backup:
- Direct attached storage. You can add virtual and physical servers as cache repositories:
- Microsoft Windows server (only 64-bit versions are supported).
- Linux server (only 64-bit versions are supported).
- Network attached storage. You can add SMB (CIFS) Share or NFS Share as a cache repository.
For system requirements of backup repository servers that can be used as a cache repository, see Backup Repository Server.
For more information on the cache repository, see Cache Repository in NAS Backup Support.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor. Using multi-core processors improves data processing performance, and is highly recommended on WAN links faster than 10 Mbps. Memory: 8 GB RAM. Using faster memory (DDR3/DDR4) improves data processing performance. Disk Space: Disk space requirements depend on the WAN Accelerator role. For more information, see WAN Accelerator Sizing. Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, and 1 Mbps or faster for off-site backup and replication. High latency and reasonably unstable WAN links are supported. |
OS | Only 64-bit versions of the following operating systems are supported:
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information, see WAN Accelerators.
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Global cache is not leveraged by source WAN accelerators, or by WAN accelerators operating in the High bandwidth mode, so it does not need to be allocated and populated in such cases. |
Backups can be performed to the following disk-based storage:
- Local (internal) storage of the backup repository server.
- Direct Attached Storage (DAS) connected to the backup repository server, including external USB/eSATA drives, USB pass through and raw device mapping (RDM) volumes.
- Storage Area Network (SAN). Backup repository server must be connected into the SAN fabric through hardware or virtual HBA, or software iSCSI initiator.
- Network Attached Storage (NAS) able to present its capacity as NFS share (protocol version 3.0 and 4.1 only) or SMB/CIFS share (any protocol version). Using SMB protocol for non-continuously available (CA) file shares is not recommended for reliability reasons. NFS shares are supported both for direct operation and when mounted to a Linux repository server.
- Dell EMC Data Domain (DD OS version 6.0 to 7.3) with DDBoost license. Both Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity is supported.
- ExaGrid (firmware version 5.0.0 or later).
- HPE StoreOnce (firmware version 3.15.1 or later) with Catalyst license. Both Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity is supported. HPE Cloud Volumes Backup is supported.
- Quantum and OEM partners (DXi software 3.4.0 or later). Supported Quantum DXi systems include DXi4700 (NAS configuration), DXi4700 (multi-protocol configuration), DXi 4800, DXi 6900, DXi 6900-S, DXi 9000.
Once backups are created, they can be copied (for redundancy) or offloaded (for long-term retention) to one of the following object storage types using scale-out backup repository functionality:
- Amazon S3 (including AWS Snowball Edge).
- IBM Cloud Object Storage.
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage (including Microsoft Azure Data Box).
- Any S3-compatible object storage (on-premises appliance, or cloud storage provider).
For the full list of partner-tested solutions including primary backup storage solutions, S3-compatible object storage solutions and offline storage solutions, see this Veeam page.
For information on NAS backup target, see Backup, Archive, Secondary Repositories in NAS Backup Support.
Backup from Storage Snapshots and Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots are supported for the following storage devices:
Cisco HyperFlex (HX-Series/SpringPath)
- NFS connectivity only
- HyperFlex 2.0 or later (Backup from Storage Snapshots, Full Integration mode)
- Basic authentication is not supported for SSO users in HyperFlex starting from version 3.0
DataCore SANsymphony
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- DataCore SANsymphony 10.0 PSP10 or later
Dell EMC SC Series (formerly Compellent)
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Storage Center OS 7.4.2 or later
- FluidFS volumes and Live Volumes are not supported
Dell EMC VNX, VNX2, VNXe and Unity XT/Unity
- NFS, Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Dell EMC VNX/VNX2 all OE versions that don't require TLS 1.2 are supported
- Dell EMC Unity XT/Unity, VNXe OE versions 3.x up to 5.0
Fujitsu ETERNUS AF/DX series
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- ETERNUS AF series: AF250 S2, AF650 S2, AF150 S3, AF250 S3, AF650 S3
- ETERNUS DX series: DX60 S4, DX100 S4, DX200 S4, DX500 S4, DX600 S4, DX8900 S4, DX60 S5, DX100 S5, DX200 S5, DX500 S5, DX600 S5, DX900 S5
- Storage firmware version:
- ETERNUS AF S2 and DX S4 series (except DX8900 S4): V10L88-1000 or later
- ETERNUS AF S3 and DX S5 series, DX8900 S4: V11L30-5000 or later
HPE 3PAR StoreServ
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- 3PAR OS versions 3.1.2 up to 3.3.1 MU3
- iSCSI VLAN tags are supported
- Virtual Domains are supported
HPE Primera
- Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity only
- OS versions 4.x
- Virtual Domains are supported
HPE Nimble Storage AF-Series, HF-Series and CS-Series
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Nimble OS 2.3 or later
- HPE Nimble synchronous replication is not supported
HPE StoreVirtual (formerly LeftHand / P4000 series) and StoreVirtual VSA
- iSCSI connectivity only
- LeftHand OS versions 9.5 up to 12.8
- HPE SV3200 (LeftHand OS version 13) is not supported
Huawei OceanStor
- NFS, Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Huawei OceanStor V3 and F V3 Series with software version V300R006 or later
- Huawei OceanStor Dorado V3 Series with software version V300R001 or later
- Huawei OceanStor Dorado V6 Series with software version 6.0 or later
- Huawei OceanStor V5 and F V5 Series with software version V500R007 or later
- Huawei OceanStor V6 with software version 6.0 or later
IBM Spectrum Virtualize (IBM Storwize, IBM SVC, Lenovo Storage V series)
- Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- IBM Spectrum Virtualize OS from version 7.6 up to 8.4.1
INFINIDAT Infinibox F-series
- NFS, Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- InfiniBox 3.0 or later
You must add to the backup infrastructure only one of the two InfiniBox storage arrays for which Active/Active Replication is configured, or exclude the replicating volumes on one of these arrays from rescan. For details on how to exclude volumes from rescan, see Rescanning Storage Systems.
NetApp FAS/AFF, FlexArray (V-Series), ONTAP Edge/Select/Cloud VSA and FAS OEM (IBM N series and Lenovo DM series)
- NFS, Fibre Channel, iSCSI
- ONTAP 7-mode versions 8.2 up to 8.2.5
- ONTAP cluster-mode versions 8.3 up to 9.7
- MetroCluster is supported
- ONTAP features application-aware data management and SVM-DR are not supported
- NetApp Synchronous SnapMirror is not supported
NetApp SolidFire/HCI
- iSCSI connectivity
- NetApp SolidFire support requires Element OS or later
- NetApp HCI support requires Element OS 10.0 or later
Pure Storage FlashArray
- NFS, Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Purity 4.8 or later
- Purity ActiveCluster is supported
- Replicated volume snapshots on the target array are supported
For details, see this Veeam KB article.
Tintri IntelliFlash (formerly Western Digital IntelliFlash, Tegile)
- NFS, Fibre Channel (FC) or iSCSI connectivity
- Tintri IntelliFlash 3.9.2, 3.10.1 or later
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86 processor (x86-64 recommended). Memory: 2 GB RAM plus 200MB for each concurrent task. Depending on the source of tape jobs, different entities are considered tasks: for machine backup to tape, a task covers a source job or a source chain if tape paralleling is enabled; for file backup to tape, a task covers an entire server or a file share. Restoring VMs directly from tape requires 400MB of RAM per 1TB of virtual disk size. Additionally (for file to tape jobs processing more than 1,000,000 files):
Disk Space: 300 MB, plus 10 GB for temporary data storage for backup and restore operations. Network: 1 Gbps or faster. |
OS | Both 32-bit and 64-bit (recommended) versions of the following operating systems are supported:
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | LTO3 or later tape libraries (including VTL) and standalone drives are supported. Tape device must be directly attached to the backup server, to a tape server through SAS, FC or iSCSI interface. Note that VMware does not support connecting tape libraries to ESXi for VM pass-through. |
Software |
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Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Platform | Physical or virtual machine |
OS | Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported:
For the communication with object storage repositories, external repositories and NFS backup repositories, you can use machines running 64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions:
1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this versions starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information, see Gateway Server.
On the mount server machine, Veeam Backup & Replication installs the Veeam Mount Service. The Veeam Mount Service requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2. If Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 is not installed on the machine, Veeam Backup & Replication will install it automatically. For more information, see Mount Server.
If you plan to restore VM guest OS files from VMs running Microsoft Windows ReFS, you must install Veeam Backup & Replication components on machines running specific OS versions. For more information, see Veeam Backup & Replication Console.
[For Microsoft Windows 2008R2/7] Make sure that you have SHA-2 code signing support installed. Normally, this component is included in Microsoft Windows updates. For more information, see Microsoft Docs.
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Server
The machine where you plan to install Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager must meet the requirements listed in the System Requirements section of the Enterprise Manager User Guide.
You can create transactionally consistent backups or replicas of VMs that run the following applications.
Application | Requirement |
|---|---|
Microsoft Active Directory | Veeam Backup & Replication supports domain controller backup for the following operating systems:
Minimum supported domain and forest functional level is Windows 2008. 1 Veeam Backup & Replication supports this version starting from version 10 (build 10.0.1.4854) with cumulative patch 20201202 installed. To learn more details about this patch, see this Veeam KB article. |
Microsoft Exchange | The following versions of Microsoft Exchange are supported:
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Microsoft SharePoint | The following versions of Microsoft SharePoint Server (virtualized either on VMware or Hyper-V platform) are supported:
All editions are supported (Foundation, Standard, Enterprise). |
Microsoft SQL Server | The following versions of Microsoft SQL Server are supported (for application-aware processing and transaction log backup):
All editions of Microsoft SQL Server are supported. The database whose logs you want to back up must use the Full or Bulk-logged recovery model. In this case, all changes of the Microsoft SQL Server state will be written to transaction logs, and you will be able to replay transaction logs to restore the Microsoft SQL Server. You can use the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio to switch to one of these models. For more information, see Microsoft Docs. |
Oracle on Windows OS | Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup of the following Oracle Database versions:
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation. |
Oracle on Linux OS | Veeam Backup & Replication supports backup of the following Oracle Database versions:
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation.
For supported operating systems, see Oracle documentation. |
Oracle Database configuration | Consider the following:
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Consider that 32-bit Oracle running on 64-bit operating systems and Oracle XE on Linux are not supported. |