## Requirements and Limitations

This section provides you with important information on deployment limitations and supported environments of different devices.

You may refer to following sections to learn more details regarding different devices and deployment requirements.

- NAS Requirements and Limitations
- Personal Computer Requirements and Limitations
- Physical Server Requirements and Limitations
- File Server Requirements and Limitations
- Virtual Machine Requirements and Limitations

### NAS Requirements and Limitations

To install Active Backup for Business, a NAS device runs DSM 6.1.7 or above is required and only x64 Synology NAS servers and Btrfs file system is supported. For backup performance, it is recommended to have at least 4G of RAM and not to set up the shared folder quota due to deduplication mechanism.

Note:If your NAS runs on DSM 6.2 Beta, please update DSM to the newest version before installing Active Backup for Business.

### Personal Computer Requirements and Limitations

Active Backup for Business supports backing up end-point devices running on Windows platform.

Supported Windows edition:
- Windows 10 Creators Update (all editions)
- Windows 10 (all editions)
- Windows 8.1 (all editions)
- Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)

Note: The beta version does not support backing up dynamic disks. Backup task would fail if the protected device contains dynamic disks.

### Physical Server Requirements and Limitations

For backing up physical server, Active Backup for Business supports Windows operating system.

Supported Windows edition:
- Windows 10 Creators Update (all editions)
- Windows 10 (all editions)
- Windows 8.1 (all editions)
- Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2008 R2

Note: The beta version does not support backing up dynamic disks. Backup task would fail if the protected device contains dynamic disks.

### File Server Requirements and Limitations

For backing up file server, Active Backup for Business supports the servers running with SMB (Windows) and rsync 3.0 or above (Linux) protocol. You may back up data to your Synology NAS using Active Backup for Business.

Note: The beta version does not support backing up dynamic disks. Backup task would fail if the protected device contains dynamic disks.

### Virtual Machine Requirements and Limitations

This section provides you with important information on deployment limitations and supported virtual machine (VM) environments.

- Virtual Infrastructure
  For virtual machine backup, Active Backup for Business supports the following versions of the VMware vSphere platform.
  - Supported VMware vSphere versions: 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 6.0, 6.5
  - Supported VMware editions:
    - VMware free ESXi
    - VMware vSphere Essentials, VMware vSphere Essentials Plus
    - VMware vSphere Standard, VMware vSphere Advanced
    - VMware vSphere Enterprise, VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus

  #### Note:

  - For VMware free ESXi, users will need to enable the SSH port to perform virtual machine backup.
  - Your Synology NAS is required to have a public IP or a private IP that can be accessed via VMware vSphere ESXi / ESX.
  - Full administrative permissions (recommended) or limited permissions are required.
- TCP Ports
  To perform operation successfully and enable communication between Synology NAS and VMware Servers, the following TCP ports are required.

  TCP Port | Where | Notes
  --- | --- | ---
  443 | vCenter Server, ESXi Host | Default port used for connections to VMware infrastructure (vCenter server and ESXi host). Must be opened on vCenter Servers and ESXi hosts.
  902 | ESXi Host | Port used for data transfer and moving. Must be opened on ESXi hosts.

- Virtual Machines
  - Operating System
    - All operating systems supported by VMware and any application
    - Application-aware backup for Microsoft Windows 2003 SP1 or later except Nano Server due to the absence of the VSS framework.

  #### Note:

  If you want to run the backed up device on Synology Virtual Machine Manager, only specific operating systems can be supported. Please refer to this article for more information regarding the supported operating system on Synology VMM.

  - Virtual Hardware
    - All types and versions of virtual hardware are supported, including 62 TB VMDK.
    - Raw Device Mapping (RDM) disks in physical mode, independent disks, disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator or disks engaged in SCSI bus sharing are not supported since VMware does not support snapshot of such VMs, and are skipped from processing automatically. If you want to back up data on such disks, please install the Active Backup for Business agent on your guest operating system and use physical server backup instead.
  - Software
    - VMware Tools: VMware Tools are required for application-aware backup and guest OS file-level restore (Windows / Linux).
    - All latest OS service packs and patches are required for application-aware backup.
    - File Level Restore: If the guest OS is Windows, supported file systems are NTFS and FAT32; if the guest OS is Linux, supported file systems include NTFS, FAT32, EXT3, and EXT4.
- Limitations
  - Encrypted virtual machines, a feature introduced in VMware vSphere 6.5, are not supported for now.
  - Fault tolerant machines, a feature introduced in VMware vSphere 6.0, are not supported for now.