Backup Server

Linux-Based Backup Server (Veeam Software Appliance)

Linux-Based Backup Server (Veeam Software Appliance)

Specification

Requirement

Hardware

CPU: x86-64 processor with 8 cores (vCPUs) minimum.

Memory: 16 GB RAM plus 500 MB RAM for each concurrent job.

Disk Selection Logic: When selecting a disk for system and adjacent functions, Veeam Software Appliance automatically chooses an SSD over an HDD, and selects the smaller disk of the two available. The sizing recommendations for Disk 1 below remain valid for the system disk.

Disk 1: 240 GB1 minimum. This disk hosts Veeam JeOS, Veeam Backup & Replication software, configuration database and instant recovery cache.

Recommended sizing depends on the number of protected workloads:

  • 480 GB1 SSD for small environments (up to a few hundred workloads).
  • 960 GB1 SSD for medium-sized environments (up to a few thousand workloads).
  • Multi-TB1 SSD for large environments. Larger capacity increases the disk space available to instant recovery cache, allowing for running more machines for longer time.

Disk 2: 240 GB1 minimum. This disk hosts guest file system catalogs and backups, therefore recommended sizing depends on your backup storage needs. Any additional disks found in the system during Veeam Software Appliance deployment will be automatically joined with Disk 2 into the single Logical Volume Manager (LVM) spanned volume.

Note: Veeam Software Appliance only supports local disks and hardware RAID. RAID controller with battery or capacitor backed write cache is highly recommended for performance and reliability reasons.

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.

Server Hardware: Veeam offers Veeam Ready - Appliance certification for hardware vendors. This certification ensures verified and certified compatibility, delivering an optimal customer experience through additional requirements for direct technical collaboration between vendors. Veeam also acknowledges that some customers may need to use existing hardware. As current compatibility guidance, we expect that most systems listed on the RHEL Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) will be compatible with Veeam Software Appliance.

1 Here GB is considered as 10^9 bytes, TB as 10^12 bytes.

Configuration Database

If you are planning to use a remote installation of the PostgreSQL on Linux, ensure that the following packages are installed on it:

  • postgresql17.x86_64
  • postgresql17-contrib.x86_64
  • postgresql17-libs.x86_64
  • postgresql17-plperl.x86_64
  • postgresql17-server.x86_64

All of them must be of version 17.6 or later.

Software

  • VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0 U2 (7.0.2) or later for OVA deployments.
  • Veeam Software Appliance ISO deployment to a virtual machine is supported for all hypervisors for which Veeam offers host-based VM backup functionality. For details, see Supported Platforms, Applications and Workloads.

Windows-Based Backup Server

Windows-Based Backup Server

Specification

Requirement

Hardware

CPU: x86-64 processor with 8 cores (vCPUs) minimum.

Memory: 16 GB RAM plus 500 MB RAM for each concurrent job. Memory consumption varies according to the number of VMs in the job, size of VM metadata, size of production infrastructure, and so on.

[For users with tape installations] For system requirements for large number of files in the file backup to tape job, see the Before You Begin section for file backup to tape.

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 100 GB recommended).
  • At least 10 GB for storing logs, although the disk space required for logging depends on the set of features used and may significantly increase. For details on logs locations, see Logging.
  • When upgrading Veeam Backup & Replication, additional disk space is required. For details, see the Upgrade Checklist section.
  • If you use a remote repository as a target for a configuration backup job, a temporary BCO file is created in the %TEMP% folder during the job (by default, this is C:\Windows\Temp). Therefore, additional free space is required for the temporary BCO file. For more information, see Creating Configuration Backups.

Network: 1 Gbps or faster for on-site backup and replication, 1 Mbps or faster for off-site 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 if other is not specified.

OS

64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported1:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2025
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Microsoft Windows 11 (versions 22H2 – 25H2)
  • Microsoft Windows 10 (version 22H2)
  • Microsoft Windows 10 LTS (version LTSC 2021)

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.

Configuration Database

Local or remote installation of the following versions of PostgreSQL1:

  • PostgreSQL 17.x (PostgreSQL 17.6 is included in the Veeam Backup & Replication 13 setup)
  • PostgreSQL 15.x
  • PostgreSQL 14.x

Note that Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager does not support PostgreSQL installations on cloud database services (for example, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).

The PostgreSQL instance must have UTF-8 as the default encoding for the database.

Local or remote installation of the following versions of Microsoft SQL Server1:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2025
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2022
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2019
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2017
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2016

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.

If you plan to use a database engine other than PostgreSQL 17.x, included in the Veeam Backup & Replication setup, you must install it yourself. If you want to use an already installed PostgreSQL instance for the configuration database, make sure the instance contains the default postgres database. If you allow the setup to install a new PostgreSQL instance, the postgres database will be created on the instance automatically. Since Veeam Backup & Replication connects to the postgres database to access the configuration database, do not rename the postgres database upon the installation.

Veeam Backup & Replication does not support Microsoft SQL Server database with case-sensitive collations.

Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager configuration databases can be deployed in Microsoft SQL Always On Availability Groups. For more information, see this Veeam KB article.

1 Consider the following:

  • Veeam Backup & Replication does not support PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server installations on cloud database services (for example, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).
  • We do not recommend sharing a local instance of PostgreSQL with any other services. It should be dedicated to host the backup server database only.
  • If you are planning to use Veeam Backup & Replication with Veeam Cloud Connect, note that system requirements for the backup server are different. For more information, see the Veeam Cloud Connect Guide.

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:

  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8
  • Microsoft .NET Hosting 8.0.21
  • Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime 8.0.21
  • Microsoft SQL Server System CLR Types 2014 (both for SQL Server and PostgreSQL installations)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable 14.40.33810
  • Microsoft Windows PowerShell 7.4.13

Note: The Veeam Backup & Replication uninstaller does not remove any prerequisite software that was previously installed, to avoid causing problems with other programs. When upgrading to a newer version, if a previously required prerequisite is no longer needed, it will also not be uninstalled.

The backup server installation also requires the automatic installation of the prerequisite software for Veeam Cloud Plug-Ins.

The following software must be installed manually if missing:

  • Windows Installer 4.5 or later

Consider the following:

For more information, see the Backup Server section.

Page updated 2/24/2026

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