VMware: System Requirements

Verify that your environment meets the requirements for protecting VMware VMs with Commvault.

Access Nodes

Windows

• Microsoft Windows Server 2025 x64 Editions (Standard, DataCenter, and Core)

• Microsoft Windows Server 2022 x64 Editions (Standard, DataCenter, and Core)

• Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only) x64 Editions (Standard, DataCenter, and Core)

• Microsoft Windows Server 2016 x64 Editions (Standard, DataCenter, and Core)

Linux

For Linux access nodes, use one of the following options:

• Deploy a File Recovery Enabler for Linux (FREL) to serve as an access node. For more information, see Linux Proxy Support for the VSA with VMware.

• Install the Virtual Server Agent on a Linux machine that runs any of the following operating systems:

  • CentOS 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, or 7.9

  • Oracle Linux 8.x or 9.x

  • RHEL 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.x, or 9.x

    Note

    • For RHEL/OEL 9.0 and 9.1 VSA access nodes, if the libssl.so.3 and libcrypto.so.3 VDDK 8.0.1 load fails, upgrade openssl-libs to the latest version to use VDDK 8.0.1. Upgrading will protect the VMware workloads.

    • To use a machine that runs RHEL 7.7 as a VSA proxy, you must install the pcre-devel-8.32-17.el7.x86_64 package.

    • For a machine that runs RHEL 8.x or 9.x, to install operating system packages that are required to enable automatic installation of Mono, register the machine with Red Hat.

  • Rocky Linux 8.x or 9.x

For more information, see Deploying a Linux Machine as a VSA Proxy.

Support for Linux access nodes for VMware is enabled by default for the HyperScale 1.5 Appliance and HyperScale X. You can select appliance nodes to act as Linux access nodes.

For Linux access nodes, disable lvmetad to avoid issues with HotAdd operations during backup and recovery.

Hard Drive

Verify that at least 100 GB free space is available for installing the Virtual Server Agent.

VMware vCenter Server

The following versions are supported for vSphere, vCenter, vCenter Server Appliance, and ESX/ESXi:

4.1 or later, 5.0.x, 5.1.x, 5.5, 5.5.1, 5.5.2, 5.5.3, 5.5.6, 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, 6.0.3, 6.5, 6.7, 6.7.1, 6.7.2, 6.7.3, 7.x (all minor updates), 8.x (all minor updates)

For any ESXi servers, the VADP is not available in the free version of ESXi. The Essentials licensing level or higher is required.

VMware Cloud Director

VMware Cloud Director 5.1.x, 5.5.x, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.5, 9.7, 10.0, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5

Port Requirements

In an environment with firewalls, the vCenter, ESX servers, and Virtual Server Agent must be able to communicate with each other. To ensure that all components can communicate through the firewall, ensure that the ports for web services (default: 443) and TCP/IP (default: 902) are opened for bidirectional communication on each of these machines.

Additional port requirements may be necessary for the MediaAgent when you use specific features such as Live Browse, Live File Recovery, and Live Mount. For more information, see Entering Required Firewall Settings.

Guest Virtual Machine Requirements

VMware Transport Considerations

Licensing

In vSphere 5.0, the SCSI HotAdd feature is enabled only for vSphere editions Enterprise and higher, which have Hot Add licensing enabled. No separate Hot Add license is available for purchase as an add-on. In vSphere 4.1, Hot Add was also enabled in the Advanced edition. Customers with vSphere Essentials or Standard editions are not able to perform proxy-based backup, which relies on SCSI HotAdd. Those customers must use alternate transport modes.

SCSI Controllers

HotAdd relies on the SCSI protocol. With VDDK 6.5 or later, VMware recommends the paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) controller. (For more information, see Virtual Disk Development Kit Release Notes.) For older VDDK versions, use the LSI SCSI controller. HotAdd does not support IDE disks.

Related Topics

For more information, see System Requirements for Virtual Server Agent with VMware.