[V12] System Requirements for our 2022 release

[Gostev]

Dear all,

I wanted to share our plans on the system requirements for the next major release, to be shipped about one year from now. This is both for your planning purposes, but also for us to ensure these changes are acceptable for most of our users.

Dropping support for older software versions is important so we don't spread our QC resources too thin as new OS versions come out. In addition, this simplifies the implementation of new features and enables us to create more efficient code. While we strive to drop support only for EOL versions which are out of support by the vendor itself (no more security updates), we also consider actual usage according to our support big data, and high R&D costs of continued support of certain versions.

One other change we're planning for later this year is introducing an extended support policy. More on this when final decisions are made, but what's important now is that any environments affected by these changes will potentially be able to stay on V11 for longer than usual. Please keep this in mind when voting.

The suggested changes below are in comparison to V11, which is virtually identical to V10 as it comes to minimum supported versions. If this discussion results in any changes to the support matrix, I will highlight such items in red, so you can easily identify them if you come back to check on this later.

All Functionality

Dropping support for Windows Server SAC versions 1803 to 1909; minimum supported SAC version is 20H2.

Protected Infrastructure

VMware
vSphere: dropping support for version 5.5; minimum supported version is 6.0 (for both ESXi and vCenter).
vCloud Director: dropping support for versions 9.x and 10.0; minimum supported version is 10.1
VMs: no changes, Windows 2008 remains supported.

Microsoft Hyper-V
Hyper-V: dropping support for 2008 R2 SP1; minimum supported version is 2012.
SCVMM: no changes, minimum supported version remains SCVMM 2012 SP1.
VMs: no changes, Windows 2008 remains supported.

Nutanix AHV
AHV: dropping support for versions 5.5 through 5.11; minimum supported version is 5.15.
VMs: no changes, Windows 2008 remains supported.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
Windows Server: no changes, minimum supported version remains Server 2008 R2 SP1.
Windows Client: Dropping support for Windows 10 versions through 1903 (excluding LTS*); minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909. Based on the feedback, we decided to keep support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 for this release.
Dropping support for Microsoft OneDrive as a target (poor performance and reliability, relatively few users).

Veeam Agent for Linux
CentOS: dropping support for CentOS 8; continuing to support CentOS 7.
Debian: dropping veeamsnap (snapshot driver) support for Debian 11 32-bit version.
Fedora: dropping support for Fedora 32; minimum supported version is Fedora 33.
RHEL: no changes.
Oracle Linux: no changes.
SLES: dropping support for SLES 11 and some older service packs; minimum supported versions are SLES 12 SP4 and SLES 15 SP1.
Ubuntu: dropping support for Ubuntu 14.04; minimum supported version is Ubuntu 16.04.
Rolling distributions: Support for rolling distributions like CentOS Stream and openSUSE will be experimental given their ever-changing nature.
(also dropping veeamsnap (snapshot driver) support for Tumbleweed 32-bit version).

Veeam Agent for Mac
No changes; minimum supported version is High Sierra 10.13.

Protected Applications

Microsoft Exchange Server
Dropping support for Exchange 2010; minimum supported version is Exchange 2013.

Microsoft SharePoint Server
Dropping support for SharePoint 2010; minimum supported version is SharePoint 2013.

Microsoft SQL Server
Dropping support for SQL Server 2005; minimum supported version is SQL Server 2008.

Oracle
No changes.

SAP HANA
No changes.

Backup Infrastructure

For backup infrastructure components, we always required more modern OS versions than for protected machines, so the trimming here is more aggressive. The main reason is security, however this also allows us to achieve better performance by leveraging modern technologies not compatible with earlier versions.

Backup Server, Backup Console and Enterprise Manager
Windows Server: dropping support for Server 2008 R2 SP1; minimum supported version is Server 2012.
Windows Client: dropping support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 versions through 1903 (excluding LTS*); minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909.
SQL Server: dropping support for SQL Server 2008; minimum supported version is SQL Server 2012.
Browsers: dropping support for Internet Explorer 11.

Backup Infrastructure Components (proxies, repositories, gateways, accelerators etc.)
Windows Server: dropping support for Server 2008 R2 SP1; minimum supported version is Server 2012.
Windows Client: dropping support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 versions through 1903 (excluding LTS*); minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909.
CentOS: dropping support for CentOS 8.x; continuing to support CentOS 7.x (but no support for CentOS Stream).
Debian: dropping support for Debian 9; minimum supported version is Debian 10.
Fedora: dropping support for all versions.
RHEL: dropping support for RHEL 6; minimum supported version is RHEL 7.
Oracle Linux: dropping support for Oracle Linux 6; minimum supported version is Oracle Linux 7 (both UEK and RHCK).
openSUSE: dropping support for all versions.
SLES: dropping support for SLES 11 and some older service packs; minimum supported versions are 12 SP4 or later, 15 SP1 or later.
Ubuntu: dropping support for 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS; supported versions are 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS.

Backup Repository
The support matrix will be aligned with all other infrastructure components, which means dropping current support for 32-bit Linux OS versions.
We will also drop the run-time data mover completely, keeping only the persistent data mover (a V11 feature) going forward.

* Windows 10 LTS releases are LTSB (1607) and LTSC (1809).

[Mildur]

Hi Anton

Is this true or a typo?

CentOS: dropping support for CentOS 8.x; continuing to support CentOS 7.x (but no support for CentOS Stream).

Ps:
Ok, i have found the reason. Centos drops 8.0 support in 2021. Centos 7.0 in 2024

[Gostev]

Correct, CentOS 8.x will be EOL by the end of this year... no more security updates after this.

[AlexLaforge]

There is definitely WAY TOO MUCH support dropping, removals, deprecations.

- vSphere 6.0 ? a LOT of us are using it installed on-prem hardware.

- MacOS 10.13 : Seriously ? Are you playing the same game than Apple, pushing us to the most recent versions with a lot of deprecations inside each new MacOS version ? A lot of Mac users are PRO users, using a whole bunch of imaging /video / music plugins. We are sticking with the MacOS version that is ABLE to run our plugins without breaking our daily production workflow, and without forcing us to durably harm our production capabilities. In this tough economic times, depriving us from the tools that allow us to earn/make some money is the worst choice you could make.

- Why not dropping support for WinServer 2012, 2016, and 2019 too ... Seriously, go for it.

[jr.maycock]

Most of the proposed contents seem fine, but I am concerned that the plans for vSphere and Windows Client OS are too aggressive. vSphere 5.5 I could understand deprecating in 2022, but taking support for all of 6.0 out at the same time does not seem to reflect the real-world usage of Veeam products by customer organizations. I also fail to understand why it's necessary to cease supporting Windows 10 versions pre-1909 for Veeam Agent backups or Veeam component installations. Does this exclude LTSC? There are many hardware selections in professional workstations that fail to validate as eligible for Microsoft's standard update cadence and remain locked to 1609 or 1803. Coupled with deprecating WIndows 8.1 prior to it actually hitting end of life from Microsoft, my assessment of the stated plans for Windows Client OS is that they stand out from the rest of the list as uniquely aggressive and premature.

It's good to see OneDrive as a Veeam Agent backup target being deprecated, I seemed to have consistently bad experiences with that kind of deployment.

[AlexLeadingEdge]

Hi Veeam,

The lack of backwards compatibility is becoming a big issue for us. Veeam has already lost one large client as they still uses ESXi 5.0 for their vSphere hosts, so they can't use anything higher than Veeam B&R 9.5.

With COVID-19 and the relative uncertainty in the market, most of our clients are tightening their belts and don't want to buy new Virtual Hosts as the capital expense is too high.

[GrandAdmiral]

- vSphere 6.0 ? a LOT of us are using it installed on-prem hardware.

Note that they're only dropping support for V6.0 itself, other versions from the 6.X branch (6.5 and 6.7) remain supported. 6.0 support was dropped by VMware itself almost 12 months ago.

That said I agree that it does seem like quite alot of depreciation, we have some customers who are still stuck on Windows 7 due to needing to support specialist hardware. I'd like to see older versions of Agent remain compatible with newer versions of B&R if at all possible so they can stay integrated into our infrastructure.

[AhmedS]

It is pretty much ok.
I am concerned about dropping support for VMware V6.0.
We still have a few environments on older hardware that cannot be upgraded to 6.x, and right now purchasing newer hardware is extremely difficult.
The being said, we will have to remain on v11 for a longer period of time or split the Veeam environment to run off older versions for the deprecated hosts while running v12 for our newer kit.
Thanks

[shoaib_ahmed]

Dropping support for ESXi 5.5 and 6.0 is huge, even though VMware dropped the support for these products. But license still works for a lot of customers and as VMware is a very stable, support requirement is very less for customers.

[crackocain]

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
Windows Client: Dropping support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 versions through 1903; minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909.

Some special applications use old Windows versions. This supports are critical in my opinion.
Other drop supports are fine.

[Sebastiaan-Vita]

Perhaps this was missed during the typing of the opening post, but Exchange isn't mentioned under Applications.
My hunch is that there will be no changes in supporting Exchange.

[zmedgyesi]

Some special applications use old Windows versions. This supports are critical in my opinion.
Other drop supports are fine.

+1

Note, Windows 8.1 extended support ends on January 10, 2023.

[HenrikS.]

Protected infrastructure and applications.
I would like to still see Agents for older OSs and SQL server 2005+ support.

On another note, I am more interested in learning when you are planning on supporting kerberos only authentication - also for Hyper-V deployments.
Ref: microsoft-hyper-v-f25/feature-request-k ... 50103.html

[SysAdmAcc]

I don't see the issue in dropping support for versions of software that the original vendor is also depricating. If you cannot update / upgrade those systems you might as well wait upgrading Veeam backup version as well since the current version 11 will still be able to backup those environments.

[MichaelG7]

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
Windows Client: Dropping support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 versions through 1903; minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909.

Hello, in our production environment we have steel presses and other equipment that ships with specialized software on Windows 7. Some of the manufacturers of those production machines often just made a switch from XP to 7 with there machines. So we really need the support for Windows 7, also in the following years since we can not do anything but support those legacy OS with special software on them..

Please keep the Windows 7 support!

[srdegeus]

vSphere: dropping support for versions 5.5 and 6.0; minimum supported version is 6.5 (for both ESXi and vCenter).

As 6.5 requires still (some) Adobe Flash, it would not be to strange to make 6.7 the minimum supported version.

Dropping support for Microsoft OneDrive as a target

This should never have been implemented in the first place as this violates the EULA for OneDrive (for Business) usage. OneDrive can only be used to store personal 'documents'. In OneDrive for business is not even allowed to store departmental data on OneDrive.

Same as supporting Windows 10 as VBR Server, while technically possible it is not allowed in the Microsoft EULA to use Windows 10 to act as a server or run any software that makes it act like a server.

[micoolpaul]

Morning, I've reviewed and here are my thoughts:

Hypervisors:
I have slight hesitation about vSphere 6.0 being dropped so quickly, BUT I do understand that it's not feature parity anymore anyway with the option of CDP only being available on 6.5 onwards and it is out of support, not necessarily a deal breaker for me. And completely agree on the Hyper-V side of things.

Agents:
I have a few disagreements in this category. Windows 7 is still supported in Azure and therefore you could still be using Windows Agent to protect this, though I don't know the install base to justify the amount of R&D required to support this. What I do believe strongly however is it is a mistake to drop support prematurely for OS's such as Windows 8.1, it's still supported by Microsoft and people would've looked at the historic support track of Veeam to assume that whilst the OS is supported, Veeam will also support it. As there are codebase similarities with the still supported Server 2012/2012 R2, it seems like this shouldn't be an option. I do agree with dropping official support for older Windows 10 versions, if you're on Windows 10 then simply you should be running one of the latest feature updates, there's no financial penalty to do this from a licensing perspective so the arguments are weak to support older W10 builds.
No concerns on Linux or Mac support, again, OS updates are free on Mac and if the device can't support newer, you don't upgrade, my MBP only supports up to High Sierra and that's a 2011 model, that I can protect it with Veeam is crazy all the same, but without OS updates, stuff will start to break and it's long since time to retire it.

Backup Components:
My only concern is dropping support for the supported OS of Windows 8.1, similar to my comments in the Agents subheading.

Protected Applications:
100% agree with this.

Backup Repository:
I think that since you've only released the persistent agent in this release, it's possibly a bit premature to make it the only option. Potentially something that could be pushed back one more release? I don't say this from any technical perspective and I know this requires additional R&D investment from Veeam to maintain, but I say this from the angle of, Veeam has always historically "just worked", and your customers feel safe because of the stable platform and reputation that has been built. Too many forced changes can scare some organisations. Just my opinion.

[cdubus]

+1

Note, Windows 8.1 extended support ends on January 10, 2023.

+1

If you support Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with Veeam Agent, why you drop Windows 7 and later ?

[kaffeine]

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows
Windows Client: Dropping support for Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 versions through 1903; minimum supported version is Windows 10 version 1909.

Does it mean that the LTSB (1607) and LTSC (1809) editions wouldn't be supported anymore, even though they're on a 10 year active support cycle from Microsoft? We have multiple POS endpoints running only this LTS versions and being backed up with the Veeam Agent, the dropped support would be a direct hit for us.

The Windows 7 drop would also hit us hard, we still have it on a few industrial devices running on air-gapped networks, which will still be running Win7 for quite a few years, as it's usually the case on industrial fields (long product life cycles, quite complex testing and upgrade procedures, downtimes are always disruptive, and so on).

Apart from that, everything else seems reasonable.

[paulrogero]

Most deprecations are fine in our environment but we still need agent support for Windows 7.

[Gostev]

Perhaps this was missed during the typing of the opening post, but Exchange isn't mentioned under Applications.
My hunch is that there will be no changes in supporting Exchange.

Sorry, somehow I missed one when copy/pasting from the source document. Added to the list now, basically we'd like to drop Exchange 2010 support, because it will be out of support (no security updates) by the time V12 ships. I like to think no one will want to run Exchange without security updates especially after the massive attack through OWA exploit last week.

[Gostev]

Thanks everyone for your elaborate comments! I very much appreciate such a collaborative reaction. It is always easier to post something like "you might as well drop Server 2019, we've had enough and are going to a competitor". It takes much more time to clearly explain your use case, so thank you for your time. Only this will helps us find the "golden middle".

Let me summarize and go through them one by one in the following posts.

VMware vSphere 6.0 support seems to be a common concern from a few posters.

I agree that we usually overshoot VMware's own end of support for a longer period of time. In this case, there was a hope that due to vSphere 6.5 or later versions still supported, it would not be a problem to drop 6.0 as well. Which would be a really good thing to do indeed, as currently we have to drag a really old VDDK version to support these old versions (this VDDK is not maintained, uses outdated components and may contain security issues).

But you have explained that upgrading 6.0 hosts to older versions can be impossible even merely due to hardware compatibility requirements of these later versions. This is the valid point, and based on this I think it makes sense for us to continue supporting vSphere 6.0 in V12. I will update the original post accordingly.

For vSphere 5.5, it's really the time to go. By the time V12 ships, vSphere 5.5 will have been out of support by VMware themselves for over 3.5 years (no security updates), and 1.5 years since the end of technical guidance phase. I appreciate ESXi 5.5 will still work fine in static environments for years to come, but these static environments can also remain on V11 for the time being.

Would requiring at least vCenter 6.5 be acceptable though? This is not a subject of host hardware compatibility issues.

[ratkinsonuk]

Happy with all of this, but would like to see Agent support for Windows 7/8 remain.

[Gostev]

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows

Many concerns here, so let's go one by one:

Windows 7 will have been out of support (no security updates) for over 2 years when V12 ships. I appreciate it may still be fine to use in locked down environments (no Internet access) which have to deal with a legacy software, but no one really explained why these same environments cannot also stay on V11, along with all other legacy software versions they have? I would like to see some comments on this. Meanwhile, I will ask the team estimate the costs to continue support Windows 7.

Windows 8.1 will indeed be supported by Microsoft still when V12 ships. The only reason we're suggesting removal is its absolute minimal actual usage (fractions of percent) among our customers. I believe it's not going to be too costly for us to continue supporting Windows 8.1, I will discuss this with the team.

Windows 10 situation is simple: upgrades to a later version are fairly simple and don't require modernizing the hardware. Based on this, we're merely removing support for those version which will be out of support by Microsoft (no security updates) by the time V12 ships. Here's how it looks for Enterprise and Education and Home and Pro versions. However, the designated LTSB and LTSC versions of Windows 10 will continue be supported, I will add the corresponding note now.

By the way, while LTSC is clearly documented, I cannot seem to find a definitive statement on the LTSB builds on the Microsoft web-site. If anyone can post the link that list builds and their extended support time specifically, I would highly appreciate it. [UPDATE] Got it, thanks kaffeine.

[kaffeine]

By the way, while LTSC is clearly documented, I cannot seem to find a definitive statement on the LTSB builds on the Microsoft web-site. If anyone can post the link that list builds and their extended support time specifically, I would highly appreciate it.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecy ... -2016-ltsb
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecy ... -2019-ltsc

Regardless of the outcome, thanks for hearing the community's feedback!

[Gostev]

Veeam Agent for Mac

This one is easy, since even the product manager himself felt we should keep 10.13 for now, but I wanted to see some other feedback and a confirmation of existing use cases to justify this. Alex Laforge have shared this information above, so I will update the support matrix accordingly.

[Gostev]

P.S. If the changes made to the V12 support matrix above address your concerns, please change your vote in the poll.

[evilaedmin]

As 6.5 requires still (some) Adobe Flash, it would not be to strange to make 6.7 the minimum supported version.

6.7 dropped some CPU which are still supported by 6.5; since both have the same End of Support date by VMware (I have no idea why?) quite a few environments choose 6.5 as their "6.x version."

[Gostev]

Is there a plan to support Cloud Object Storage as a secondary backup repository for NAS backup job?

This thread is not about "what's coming" but rather about "what's going". Let's stay on-topic please

[christiankelly]

Windows 7 will have been out of support (no security updates) for over 2 years when V12 ships. I appreciate it may still be fine to use in locked down environments (no Internet access) which have to deal with a legacy software, but no one really explained why these same environments cannot also stay on V11, along with all other legacy software versions they have? I would like to see some comments on this. Meanwhile, I will ask the team estimate the costs to continue support Windows 7.

Gostev, we have over 800 Windows 7 systems that are fully supported and patched by Microsoft through the ESU program. Clients can pay a small fee and get patches, same with 2008R2. Win7 is still fully supported in Azure with security patches for free, so dropping agent support in my opinion would be a mistake. I think it would be fine to drop for the "Backup Infrastructure" side.