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Requirements and Limitations

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CDP has a set of requirements and limitations.

:bulb: Requirements

The following requirements apply to CDP:

  • CDP is included in the Veeam Universal License. When using a legacy socket-based license, the Enterprise Plus edition is required.
  • For supported platforms, seeĀ Platform Support.
  • For supported source and target datastores, seeĀ Veeam CDP Source and Target.
  • All hosts in a cluster must be of the same major version: 7.x or 6.x (6.5, or 6.7, or a combination of 6.5 and 6.7 is supported). In turn, all clusters managed by the same vCenter Server must also be of the same major version.
  • VMs on the same cluster must be protected with CDP only by one backup server.
  • The machine where the backup server resides must have at least 16 GB RAM.
  • VMs that you plan to protect must not have snapshots at the moment when the CDP policy starts for the first time.
  • Network between infrastructure components required for CDP must be 1 Gbps or faster. For high loaded systems, 10 Gbps and MTU 9000 is recommended.
  • For VMware CDP proxy requirements, seeĀ VMware CDP Proxy.

:negative_squared_cross_mark: Limitations

When planning to use CDP, mind the following limitations:

  • CDP works only for powered on VMs.
  • VM replicas can be powered on only using the failover operation; manual power on is disabled.
  • On the target host, VeeamĀ BackupĀ &Ā Replication does not allow to migrate VM replicas using VMware vSphere Storage vMotion. Note that host vMotion is supported.
  • Shared disks, physical RDM and SCSI bus sharing are not supported. Note that vRDM disks are supported.
  • Cisco HyperFlex is not supported as a source or target.
  • The maximum supported number of disks for one VM is 50. The maximum number of disks for one host is 500.
  • Data encryption rules do not apply to traffic between the ESXi host and VMware CDP proxy. For more information on the rules, seeĀ Enabling Data Encryption.

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Thanks for sharing!

When I first went to look at CDP I had an old vSphere 6.0 based cluster I wanted to test it on. I remember when vSphere 6.0 U1 came out that the vSphere API for IO filtering (VAIO) was released. So I was then surprised that Veeam blocked me installing on vSphere 6.0. But it does make sense, as I asked myself the following questions.

  1. Why would Veeam add support for a new feature to something EOL? If they found bugs, they won’t get a fix from VMware anyway.
  2. It would just add to more complexity requiring a ā€œUā€ release to support a feature, potentially.

Thanks @eprietoĀ for sharing!

Note that also ESXi must have at least 16GB memory. Just stumbled upon this in my lab.


Awesome workĀ @eprieto , i will share it with the virtualization team in my company :nerd:


Thanks for sharing!

When I first went to look at CDP I had an old vSphere 6.0 based cluster I wanted to test it on. I remember when vSphere 6.0 U1 came out that the vSphere API for IO filtering (VAIO) was released. So I was then surprised that Veeam blocked me installing on vSphere 6.0. But it does make sense, as I asked myself the following questions.

  1. Why would Veeam add support for a new feature to something EOL? If they found bugs, they won’t get a fix from VMware anyway.
  2. It would just add to more complexity requiring a ā€œUā€ release to support a feature, potentially.

Agree with you… Veeam make an excellent work with the compatibility version of vSphere...


ThanksĀ @eprietoĀ for sharing!

Note that also ESXi must have at least 16GB memory. Just stumbled upon this in my lab.

hehehehe enjoy !!!


  • All hosts in a cluster must be of the same major version: 7.x or 6.x (6.5, or 6.7, or a combination of 6.5 and 6.7 is supported). In turn, all clusters managed by the same vCenter Server must also be of the same major version.

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We have a use case to implement CDP on our vsphere 6.7.
If we plan to upgrade to 7.x then we need to shutdown the replication until both clusters areĀ on the same version? Or how is the upgrade path for this?Ā 

thx in advance.


What happens if I loose VBR Server? How can I perform the Failover? What option do I have for DR of the VBR Server itself?
Thank you!


Are there any latency minimums for CDP alongside bandwidth?


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