System Requirements (Unstructured Data)
Make sure that servers that you plan to use as backup infrastructure components to protect your unstructured data meet the listed system requirements.
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The information on this page is valid as of the date of the last page update. |
Limitations and Recommendations
Coexistence with Mission-Critical Production Servers
We do not recommend you to install Veeam Backup & Replication and its components on mission-critical machines in the production environment such as vCenter Server, Microsoft Hyper-V 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.
Installing Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager on a Windows OS machine without Desktop Experience (Core) is not supported.
Windows Server IoT/Windows Storage Server Support
For information about support of Windows Server IoT/Windows Storage Server, see this Veeam KB article.
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.
Sharing Backup Infrastructure Components Across Veeam Installations
Using Linux-based shared backup infrastructure components across different Veeam installations is not supported.
As for non-Linux backup infrastructure components, we do not recommend using them shared across different Veeam installations due to several reasons:
- Veeam installations compete for resources.
- Backup components cannot simultaneously interact with Veeam Backup & Replication of different versions.
- Adding the same repository to different Veeam Backup & Replication installations may lead to corrupted backup and data in the database.
Each of the following components for unstructured data backup may consume up to 4 GB RAM per task (in case of deduplicating storage appliances, up to 8 GB RAM): backup repository, general-purpose backup proxy, cache repository. Make sure you allocate enough memory resources for your installation. For all-in-one installations, where the server performs several roles, it must have enough memory resources for all components.
Backup Server
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor (minimum 4 cores recommended). Memory: 8 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:
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. 1 Here and throughout this document GB is considered as 2^30 bytes, TB as 2^40 bytes. |
OS | 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows 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 VMware Cloud Director servers cannot be added or used in this version of Microsoft Windows OS. 3 There may be issues when using Veeam Backup for Nutanix AHV with backup server running on this version of Microsoft Windows OS. For more information, see this Veeam KB article. |
Configuration Database | Local or remote installation of the following versions of PostgreSQL1:
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:
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 15.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:
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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 backup server installation also requires the automatic installation of the prerequisite software for Veeam Cloud Plug-Ins. The following software must be installed manually:
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Consider 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 the Backup Server section.
Veeam Backup & Replication Console
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor. Memory: 8 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 | 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported:
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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 the Veeam Backup & Replication Console. 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:
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For more information, see the Backup & Replication Console section.
General-Purpose Backup Proxy
General-purpose backup proxies can be deployed using the Veeam JeOS image by selecting the Infrastructure Appliance option. This enables certificate-based authentication, secure industry-standard communication protocols, and automated updates that are centrally controlled via the Veeam Backup & Replication server.
Note |
Component hardware requirements must be added to the Veeam JeOS system requirements to ensure that the assigned role has sufficient CPU and RAM resources. |
In addition to this option, you can deploy and manage backup proxies on supported operating systems of your choice.
The following table shows the minimum system requirements for a general-purpose backup proxy used for unstructured data backup and Veeam Agent and storage system snapshot integration.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor with 2 cores (vCPUs) minimum. 4 cores (vCPUs) are recommended (2 cores are required) for each additional concurrent task. Using multi-core processors enhances data processing performance and enables the processing of more tasks simultaneously. Memory: [For unstructured data backup] 4 GB RAM plus 4 GB RAM for each concurrent task. [For Veeam Agent and storage system snapshot integration] 2 GB RAM plus 1 GB RAM for each concurrent task. Using faster memory improves data processing performance. For all-in-one installations, where the server performs several roles, it must have enough memory resources for all components. 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, including Core edition:
64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions are supported:
Note: The VSS snapshot creation for SMB File Shares feature requires that all requirements listed in this Veeam KB article are met. |
For more information, see the General-Purpose Backup Proxies section.
Backup Repository
A Linux Hardened Repository server can be deployed from the Veeam JeOS image by selecting the corresponding option. This enables certificate-based authentication over secure, industry-leading communication protocols, eliminates the need to open SSH and additional ports, and minimizes the potential attack surface. In addition to this option, you can deploy and manage the following operating systems on your own.
The following requirements also apply to mount servers (if separate from the repository server), gateway servers for file shares, object storage and deduplication appliance-based repositories, and cache repository servers.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor. The number of cores depends on the concurrent task settings. For more information, see Limitation of Concurrent Tasks. Memory: 4 GB RAM, plus not less than 1 GB RAM for each concurrently processed machine disk. For more information, see Limitation of Concurrent Tasks. [For unstructured data backup] Not less than 4 GB RAM for each concurrently processed unstructured data source (file share or object storage); in case of deduplicating storage appliances, up to 8 GB RAM. Additionally, 1GB RAM is required for indexing each 200 million objects (files and folders). In case of all-in-one installations for unstructured data backup, where the server performs several roles, it must have enough memory resources for all components. 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, including Core edition:
64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions are supported:
Bash shell and SSH are required to deploy the management agent (SSH connection is not required for updating Veeam components and can be disabled afterwards). For advanced XFS integration (fast clone), only the following 64-bit Linux distributions are supported:
For other distributions, XFS integration support is experimental, with kernel version 5.4 or later recommended. For more information, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information, see the Backup Repositories section.
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Consider the following:
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Cache Repository
The following storage types can be used as a cache repository for unstructured data 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.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | Cache repository hardware requirements depend on the target backup repository. For direct attached storage, network attached storage (NAS) or deduplicating storage appliance as the backup target:
For object storage as the backup target:
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OS | 64-bit versions of the following Microsoft Windows operating systems are supported, including Core edition:
64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions are supported:
Bash shell and SSH are required to deploy the management agent (SSH connection is not required for updating Veeam components and can be disabled afterwards). Perl is required only for non-persistent Veeam Data Movers. Check the full list of required Perl modules in this Veeam KB article. For advanced XFS integration (fast clone), only the following 64-bit Linux distributions are supported:
For other distributions, XFS integration support is experimental, with kernel version 5.4 or later recommended. For more information, see this Veeam KB article. |
For more information, see Cache Repository in the Backup Infrastructure for Unstructured Data Backup section.
Cache Repository for Object Storage Repository
If the cache repository works with an unstructured data source being backed up to an object storage repository, it also processes active metadata that is heavily used during backup and restore operations. So you will require more disk space for the cache repository. The volume of this disk space depends on the number of the file versions on the data source and the number of unstructured data backup jobs that protect this data source. We recommend allocating not less than 1 GB of disk space for active metadata of each 1,000,000 file versions protected with 1 file backup job or object storage backup job. If you protect the same data source, for example, with 2 different backup jobs, the volume of metadata will double. For more information, see the Unstructured Data Backups in Object Storage Repositories section.
Tip |
We strongly recommend utilizing a fast storage disk, for example, an SSD in the role of the cache repository used for working with an object storage repository. |
Backup Target
Backed up data can be stored in the following disk-based systems:
- Local (internal) storage of the backup repository
- Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
The DAS must be connected to the backup repository, including external USB/eSATA drives, USB pass through and raw device mapping (RDM) volumes.
- Storage Area Network (SAN)
The backup repository must be connected into the SAN fabric through hardware or virtual HBA, or software iSCSI initiator.
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)
The NAS must be able to present its capacity as NFS share (protocol versions 3.0 and 4.1 only) or SMB (CIFS) share (any protocol versions). Using SMB (CIFS) protocol for non-continuously available (CA) file shares is not recommended for reliability reasons. Using consumer-grade NAS storage without an enterprise-grade RAID controller with battery-backed write cache (BBWC) is not recommended for reliability considerations.
- Veeam Data Cloud Vault
- Amazon S3
- Google Cloud Storage
- IBM Cloud Object Storage
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage
- 11:11 Cloud Object Storage
- Any S3-compatible object storage (on-premises appliance, or cloud storage provider)
- Dell Data Domain (DD OS version 7.9 to 8.3) with DDBoost license. Both Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity is supported.
- ExaGrid1 (firmware version 7.2.0 P08 or later)
- Fujitsu ETERNUS CS8001 software version 5.2.0 or later
- HPE StoreOnce (firmware version 3.18.18 or later for Gen3, 4.2.3 or later for Gen4, 5.1.0 or later for Gen 5) with Catalyst license
Both Ethernet and Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity are supported. Note that HPE StoreOnce Federated Catalyst is not supported.
- Infinidat InfiniGuard1 version 5.2.0 and later
- Quantum1 (DXi software 5.2.0 or later)
Supported Quantum DXi systems include DXiV5000, DXi4800, DXi4801, DXi9000, DXi9100, DXi9200, DXiT10.
1 These storage systems use the Veeam Transport Service. Make sure that they also meet system requirements for the backup repository.
Once backups are created, they can be copied (for redundancy) or offloaded (for long-term retention) to one of the following hot object storage types using the scale-out backup repository Capacity Tier:
- Veeam Data Cloud Vault
- Amazon S3 (including AWS Snowball Edge)
- Google Cloud Storage
- IBM Cloud Object Storage
- Microsoft Azure Blob storage (including Microsoft Azure Data Box)
- Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage
- 11:11 Cloud Object Storage
- Any S3-compatible object storage (on-premises appliance, or cloud storage provider)
Once backups are created on Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob Storage, or S3-compatible object storage systems with the archiving extension of Smart Object Storage API, they can be further archived to one of the following respective cold object storage classes using the scale-out backup repository Archive Tier:
- Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
- Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
- Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
- Microsoft Azure Archive Tier
- Microsoft Azure Cold Tier
- Any S3-compatible object storage with data archiving enabled
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 unstructured data backup target, see Storage Repositories in the Backup Infrastructure for Unstructured Data Backup section.
Gateway Server
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor, 2 or more cores. Memory: 4 GB RAM, plus up to 4 GB RAM for each concurrently processed machine, file share or object storage. For more information, see Limitation of Concurrent Tasks. For RAM allocation recommendations for unstructured data backup, see Limitations and recommendations for unstructured data backup. Disk space: 750 MB for Microsoft Windows-based proxies; 400 MB for Linux-based proxies. Note: If a unstructured data backup stored in an object storage does not have metadata in the cache repository, during the restore or health check operation this metadata will be downloaded to the gateway server. That can consume up to 80% of the gateway server disk space. 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, including Core edition:
Note that the fast cloning on ReFS volumes feature requires a Microsoft Windows gateway server. 64-bit versions of the following Linux distributions are supported:
Note: If you use RHEL or Rocky Linux version 9 or later, and do not use Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, you must install the following packages before adding the server to the backup infrastructure: cifs-utils (for the gateway server assigned to a SMB backup repository) or nfs-utils (for the gateway server assigned to a NFS backup repository). |
For more information, see the Gateway Server section.
Mount Server
Mount servers can be deployed using the Veeam JeOS image by selecting the Infrastructure Appliance option. This enables certificate-based authentication, secure industry-standard communication protocols, and automated updates that are centrally controlled via the Veeam Backup & Replication server.
Note |
Component hardware requirements must be added to the Veeam JeOS system requirements to ensure that the assigned role has sufficient CPU and RAM resources. |
In addition to this option, you can deploy and manage backup proxies on supported operating systems of your choice.
Specification | Requirement |
|---|---|
Hardware | CPU: x86-64 processor with 2 cores (vCPUs) minimum, plus 1 core (vCPU) for each 2 additional concurrent tasks. Using faster processors improves data processing performance. Memory: 4 GB RAM, plus not less than 1 GB RAM for each concurrently processed machine disk. The following jobs consume not less than 400 MB RAM per guest VM on mount server:
The following jobs consume 1 GB RAM per guest VM disk on mount server + 100 MB RAM per VM:
Disk Space: 1.4 GB for product installation and 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 installation. If Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.2 is not installed on the machine, Veeam Backup & Replication will install it automatically. 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, including Core edition:
64-bit versions of the Linux operating systems:
Note: If you use RHEL or Rocky Linux version 9 or later, and do not use Veeam Infrastructure Appliance, you must install the following packages before adding the server to the backup infrastructure: aspnetcore-runtime (version 8.0 or later), bindfs, samba-client and ntfs-3g. Note: If you use the Microsoft Windows mount server and plan to restore guest OS files from workloads that run Microsoft Windows with ReFS volumes, or from workloads with data deduplication enabled for some volumes, you must assign the mount server role to the machines running the required OS versions. For more information, see ReFS and Data Deduplication subsections in Restoring VM Guest OS Files. |
For more information, see the Mount Server section.