AWS DRS supported operating systems - AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
WindowsLinuxAdditional considerations

AWS DRS supported operating systems

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery allows replication of any physical, virtual or cloud-based source server to the AWS Cloud for a large variety of operating systems.

There may be a number of additional considerations to take into account when determining if your source operating system will be supported by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. Ensure that you check the Additional Considerations section in conjunction with the below lists of supported operating systems.

Note

  • AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery does not support paravirtualized source servers.

  • AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery only supports 64-bit operating systems built for the x86 system architecture.

Windows

The following Windows operating systems are supported:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit

The following End of Life Windows operating systems are supported:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit

  • Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit

Linux

The following Linux operating systems are supported:

  • Amazon Linux (AL) 1, 2, and 2023

  • CentOS 5.6 to 7.9

  • Debian Linux 8 to 11

  • Oracle Linux (OL) 6.0 to 7.0 (running Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 3 or higher or Red Hat Compatible Kernel only)

  • Oracle Linux (OL) 8.5 to 8.9 (running Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 6 or Red Hat Compatible Kernel only) – the following UEK kernels were tested:

    • 5.15.0-200.131.27.el8uek.x86_64

    • 5.15.0-101.103.2.1.el8uek.x86_64

    • 5.15.0-3.60.5.1.el8uek.x86_64

    • 5.4.17–2136.314.6.3.el8uek.x86_64

    • 5.4.17–2136.307.3.1.el8uek.x86_64

    • 5.4.17–2136.300.7.el8uek.x86_64

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.0 to 9.0

  • Rocky Linux 8 and 9

  • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4 to 15 SP5

  • Ubuntu LTS 12.04 to 24.04

Additional considerations

There may be a number of additional considerations to take into account when determining if your source operating system will be supported by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. Ensure that you check the below considerations in conjunction with the above lists of supported operating systems.

Windows

  • It is recommended to install all available Windows updates on the server.

  • Windows source servers need to have at least 4 GB of free disk space in order to launch a drill or recovery instance successfully.

  • When performing a recovery, you must boot the Failback Client with the same boot mode (BIOS or UEFI) as the Windows source server.

  • A shutdown (from the OS menu or Windows CLI) of a Windows source server no longer triggers a rescan in AWS DRS once the source server is restarted. Hard reboots, disk changes, and crashes will still trigger a rescan.

  • The WMI service must be activated to install the AWS Replication Agent.

  • Microsoft Windows Server versions 2012 64-bit and above require .Net Framework version 4.5 or above to be installed by the end user.

  • Ensure that the auto sleep function in Windows 10 is disabled. Data replication may be interrupted if the feature is activated.

End of Life Windows

  • It is recommended to install all available Windows updates on the server.

  • Windows source servers need to have at least 4 GB of free disk space in order to launch a drill or recovery instance successfully.

  • The Nitro instance family can only be used with Windows Server 2008 R2 and upwards. Earlier versions are not supported.

  • A shutdown (from the OS menu or Windows CLI) of a Windows source server will trigger a rescan in AWS DRS once the source server is restarted.

  • The WMI service must be activated to install the AWS Replication Agent.

  • Microsoft Windows Server versions 2008 R2 requires .Net Framework version 4.5 or above to be installed by the end user.

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 have reached their end of life. We recommend that customers upgrade to more modern operating system versions.

  • Windows 2003 does not support TLS 1.2, as such, you cannot download the AWS Replication Agent installer directly by using the default browser. The file needs to be copied to the server using another transfer method.

  • The AWS Replication Agent and agent installer uses a separate installer file (AwsReplicationWindowsLegacyInstaller.exe) for Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows Server versions 2003, Microsoft Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 because these OSs are using older versions of software components that cannot be upgraded due to their end-of-life status.

  • Windows 2008 x64 requires SP2 and other Microsoft updates to support the SHA-2 signature of the AWS Replication Agent driver.

  • Windows 2008 with GPT partitioned system drives are not supported.

Linux

  • Ensure that you have Python installed on the source server (version 2.4+, version 3.0+) for Agent installation.

  • Only servers using the GRUB bootloader are supported.

  • Kernel versions earlier than 2.6.18-164 are not supported by AWS and AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery. Therefore, servers that run these kernel versions cannot be replicated by AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery.

  • Recovery of servers using the Oracle ASM Filter Driver is fully supported for Oracle, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 to 8.7.

  • Secure Boot is not supported in Linux.

  • When performing a recovery for a Linux server, you must boot the Failback Client with BIOS boot mode.

  • A reboot of supported Linux servers no longer triggers a rescan in AWS DRS once the source server is restarted. Hard reboots, disk changes, and crashes will still trigger a rescan. Supported OSs include:

    • RHEL/CentOS/Oracle Linux 6+ (kernel versions 2.6.32–431 and above)

    • SUSE 12+

    • Ubuntu 16+ LTS

    • AL2

    • Rocky 8+

    • Debian 9+

  • AWS requires that servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) must have Cloud Access (BYOL) licenses in order to be recovered to AWS. Note that servers running RHEL Cloud Access Gold Images allow you to access AWS Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI), Red Hat Satellite, or Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM). If you are using RHEL Cloud Access Gold Images, you will not be able to access RHUI upon failover to AWS unless you link your AWS account to your Red Hat account via the Red Hat portal, and select the Gold image AMI in the launch template.

  • You must select an AWS provided RHEL AMI in the Launch Template for servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Pay as You Go (PAYG) images. This will allow access to RHUI after failover. Note that usage of these images will incur EC2 charges for software and infrastructure per AWS Marketplace rates.

  • Only Kernel 3.x or above are supported for Debian/Ubuntu on AWS.

  • Kernel versions 2.6.32–71 are not supported in RHEL 6.0/CentOS 6.0/Oracle Linux 6.0 on AWS.

  • Nitro instance types will work with RHEL 7.4+/CentOS 7.4+/Oracle Linux 7.4+. This specific limitation does not apply to other instance type families.

  • A pre-requirement for installing the AWS Replication Agent on RHEL 8/CentOS 8/OL 8 is first running the following: sudo yum install elfutils-libelf-devel

  • Amazon Linux 1 is only supported for AWS to AWS recovery.

  • For SUSE Linux (SLES) 11 to work, you must install the xen drivers before installing the AWS Replication Agent. You must reboot the server after installing the xen drivers (before installing the AWS Replication Agent). Use the following command to install the drivers:

  • Machines that boot off a disk configured with GPT partitioning need to have the package 'grub2-pc-modules' installed.

  • Linux kernel version upto 6.8 is supported.