Which of the following software based RAID levels are supported by Windows Server 2022

The following requirements are for typical usage patterns, acknowledging that some patterns may require greater system resources for a N-able N-central server than others.

If you have any questions about how your needs affect the system requirements of your N-able N-central server, contact your Channel Sales Specialist or email .

Server class x86_64 CPUs manufactured by Intel or AMD (i.e. Xeon or EPYC). Please refer to the Red Hat Hardware Ecosystem for further details.

You do not need to install a separate Operating System to run N-able N-central. The N-able N-central ISO includes a modified version of CentOS 7, based on the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

The physical server used to install N-able N-central in a bare metal environment must be certified to run Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 (x64) by Red Hat, or the hardware vendor, without any additional drivers. Please check the Red Hat Hardware Ecosystem for details.

Server Grade hard drives connected to a RAID controller with a Battery/Capacitor Backed Cache are Required. Examples include 10K+ RPM SCSI or SAS drives, Enterprise Grade SSDs or NVMes for bare metal and virtualized hosts, or a Fibre Channel connected SAN with Enterprise Grade hard drives for virtualized hosts (Fibre Channel cards can be used for bare metal if they are configured in the pre-boot environment and do NOT require vendor-provided drivers).

Although Desktop Hard Drives will work with the Operating System, they do not meet the minimum throughput required for the back-end Database of N-able N-central.

For more details, please refer to the Red Hat Hardware Ecosystem to see if your current hardware will work with our customized version of CentOS 7.

System requirements by number of devices managed

The table below lists the minimum specifications required to manage the number of devices indicated (based on average usage). Performance can be improved by exceeding these requirements. When determining your hardware requirements, consider any growth in managed device count that may occur over time.

Number of Devices	CPU Cores	Memory	Storage
Up to 1,000	2	4 GB RAM	80 GB RAID
Up to 3,000	4	8 GB RAM	150 GB RAID
Up to 6,000	8	16 GB RAM	300 GB RAID
Up to 9,000	12	24 GB RAM	450 GB RAID
Up to 12,000	16	32 GB RAM	600 GB RAID
Up to 16,000	22	48 GB RAM	800 GB RAID
Up to 20,000	28	64 GB RAM	1 TB RAID
Up to 24,000	34	80 GB RAM	1.2 TB RAID

Notes

Server Grade hard drives connected to a RAID controller with a Battery/Capacitor Backed Cache, are required to ensure performance and unexpected power-loss data protection.
In a virtualized environment, hard drives for the N-able N-central server must not be shared with any other applications or VM guests that have significant I/O workloads. For example, Report Manager, SQL Databases, E-Mail Servers, Active Directory Domain Controllers, SharePoint, or similar should not be installed on the same physical hard drive as N-able N-central.
N-able recommends two or more hard drives be placed in a redundant RAID configuration. With two drives, RAID 1 must be used. With more than two drives, RAID 1+0 or RAID 5 are recommended. RAID 6 is an option on servers with less than 1,000 devices (the additional write latency of RAID 6 becomes an issue above 1,000 devices).
N-able recommends more, smaller disks in a RAID array, as opposed to fewer larger disks. Database-backed applications, like N-able N-central, have better write performance with an increased number of parallel writes (hard drives).
If using Solid State Drives (SSDs), N-able requires Enterprise Grade, SLC based (or better) SSDs with a SAS interface, or Enterprise Grade NVMes. SSD and NVMe drives must have an endurance rating of at least 0.2 DWPD (Drive Writes Per Day), and at least 2 physical disks in a redundant RAID array. On Bare Metal servers, the RAID array must appear to the operating system as a single Block or NVMe Device. Currently, many PCIe and NVMe drives do not meet this last requirement and would only work in a virtualized environment.
Configure the RAID controller to use the default stripe size and a Read/Write cache of 50%/50%.

The underlying customized version of CentOS 7 has certain hardware limits that are consistent with the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 distribution. Of note are the following:

Subsystem	Limit
Minimum disk space	80GB
Maximum physical disk size (BIOS)	2TB
Maximum physical disk size (UEFI)	50TB
Required minimum memory	4GB for 4 or fewer logical CPUs
1GB per logical CPU for more than 4 logical CPUs
Maximum memory	12TB
Maximum logical CPUs	768

Examples of supported servers

Due to the ecosystem of different hardware, N-able does not certify specific hardware configurations. Instead we rely on the upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hardware vendor testing and certification.

Examples of servers that have been Red Hat certified include HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 and Dell PowerEdge R620.

Please consult with your hardware vendor to ensure that any server to be used for a bare metal installation meets the above requirements, and is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.7 certified, without the need for additional drivers.

N-able recommends that for any Bare Metal server, two or more SAS 10k or faster hard drives be placed in a RAID array to improve redundancy. RAID 1+0 or RAID 5 are supported (at the hardware RAID BIOS level). RAID 6 is an option on servers with less than 1,000 devices (the additional write latency of RAID 6 becomes an issue above 1,000 devices).

Support for virtualized environments

N-able supports VMware ESX Server 6.0 or newer and Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V or newer LTS versions. N-able recommends use of the latest stable versions of VMware or Hyper-V in order to ensure the best performance, feature set and compatibility with N-able N-central.

Hyper-V on Windows Desktop Operating Systems not Supported.

N-able N-central installed on a virtual machine running on a Desktop Operating System (such as Hyper-V on Windows 10, Virtual Box, Parallels, VMWare Fusion or similar) is not a supported configuration. If you are using Windows Hyper-V, it must be installed on a supported server class Windows Operating System.

Windows Server Semi-Annual Releases are not Supported.

Only Long-Term Support (LTS) versions of the Windows Server Operating System are supported as a Hyper-V host for N-able N-central. Microsoft currently releases "Semi-Annual Release" versions of Windows Server as a technology preview for the next LTS version. Due to their technology preview status, these "Semi-Annual Release" versions of Windows Server are not supported as Hyper-V hosts for N-able N-central.

About virtualization

Virtualization provides an abstraction layer between the hardware and the Operating System which permits the operation of multiple logical systems on one physical server unit. The table below includes considerations when using this deployment method.

System Performance	It is impossible to guarantee the scalability or performance of a N-able N-central server deployed on a Virtual Machine due to: variability in field environments resulting from host server configurations, the number of virtual guests run on the host server, and the performance of the underlying host hardware.
Supportability	N-able supports N-able N-central software deployed on VMWare ESX/ESXi 6.0 or newer, Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V or newer LTS releases, Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS EC2 in the same way that we support N-able N-central deployed on Bare Metal. This support is limited to the components (Software and Operating System) shipped with N-able N-central and does not include the troubleshooting of virtualization systems nor of performance issues related to environmental factors. N-able recommends reaching out to your hardware or virtualization vendor for support on the underlying virtualization and hardware components. Any assistance provided by N-able Support for virtualization or hardware issues is on a best-effort basis only. In the event of serious performance problems, we might ask you to migrate a virtualized N-able N-central system to a physical hardware deployment.
Virtual Hardware Support	In Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V or newer deployments, it is recommended to create a new Generation 2 VM. When configuring the VM virtual hardware, if you choose to enable , please select the template. For VMWare ESX/ESXi deployments, it is recommended to select the guest OS template, then under the , select the .
Network Adapters	N-able recommends using the VMXNET3 network card in VMWare. When the VM is configured as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, it will use VMXNET3 by default. Unless you are using Network Interface Bonding, N-able N-central requires only one (1) network adapter added to the VM configuration. Multiple network adapters that are not used in a bonding configuration can cause connectivity and licensing issues.
MAC Addresses	By default, most virtualization environments use a dynamically assigned MAC address for each virtual network card. As your N-able N-central license is generated in part by using the MAC address of its network card, it is required to use a statically assigned MAC address in order to avoid becoming de-licensed.

Recommended configuration for the virtualized server

Although provisioning virtual disks as "thin" or "thick" results in nearly-identical performance, thick provisioning is recommended, particularly when more than 1,000 devices will be connected to your N-able N-central server.

Assign the highest resource access priority to N-able N-central, as compared to other guest VMs.
Do not over-provision resources (Memory, CPU, Disk) on the virtualization host. Over-provisioning these resources can causes memory swapping to disk, and other bottlenecks that can impact guest system performance.
Ensure that the system has enough RAM and hard drive space to provide permanently allocated resources to the N-able N-central guest.

Supported Software

Browsers

N-able N-central supports the latest versions of:

Internet Explorer®
Microsoft Edge®
Mozilla Firefox®
Desktop versions Google Chrome®. Mobile phone browsers are not supported.

Chrome 42.x does not support NPAPI plugins (including Java). When you attempt to launch a remote control connection in Chrome 42.x, you will be repeatedly prompted to install the Java plugin without success.

Workaround:
In the Chrome address bar, type chrome://flags.
Under , click .
Restart Chrome.

N-able N-central is not supported on Internet Explorer in Compatibility View mode.

Remote Control

Remote control connections require the following software on the computers that initiate connections:

.NET Framework 4.5.2 on Windows devices
Oracle Java 1.8 versions that include Java Web Start

Report Manager

To use Report Manager with N-able N-central, ensure the you upgrade to the latest version of Report Manager.

Automation Manager

Automation Manager requires .NET Framework 4.5.2 and PowerShell 3.0 to run AMP-based services with N-able N-central.

SNMP Community String

On HPE ProLiant Generation 9 or older Physical Servers, when monitoring the N-able N-central server using SNMP, the community string used for SNMP queries to the server must use N-central_SNMP, not public. SNMP is only enabled on HPE ProLiant Generation 9 or older Physical Servers. All other installs do not enable SNMP on the N-able N-central server.

Supported Operating Systems

This section describes the supported operating systems for N-able N-central.

Windows Agents:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 (or later)

Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2022 Standard
Windows Server 2022 Datacenter
Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure

Windows Server 2019

Windows Server 2019 Datacenter
Windows Server 2019 Standard

Windows Server 2016

Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
Windows Server 2016 Standard
Windows Server 2016 Essentials
Windows Storage Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 MultiPoint Premium Server
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016

Windows Server 2012

R2 Datacenter
R2 Essentials
R2 Foundation
R2 Standard
Datacenter 64-bit Edition
Essentials 64-bit Edition
Foundation 64-bit Edition
Standard 64-bit Edition
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
Storage Server 2012 Enterprise 64-bit Edition
Storage Server 2012 Express 64-bit Edition
Storage Server 2012 Standard 64-bit Edition
Storage Server 2012 Workgroup 64-bit Edition

Windows 11

Microsoft Windows 11 Enterprise & Professional
Microsoft Windows 11 Education editions
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro for Workstations

Windows 10

Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise & Professional
Microsoft Windows 10 Education editions
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

Windows 8 and 8.1

8.1 Enterprise
8.1 Professional
8 Enterprise
8 Professional

Windows 7

Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise & Professional
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

macOS Agents

12.0 (Monterey)
11.0 (Big Sur)
10.15 (Catalina)
10.14 (Mojave)
10.13 (High Sierra)
10.12 (Sierra)

Linux Agents

Independent Agents are required for 64-bit Linux OS installations.

The probe performs an SSH connection a Linux device. To discover a Ubuntu/Debian OS device, the device must have openssh installed.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 8 (64-bit)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 7 (x86_64 and i686)
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (64-bit)
Ubuntu 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" (x86_64)
Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus" (x86_64 and i686)

AV Defender

Workstation Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows 11
Microsoft Windows 10
Microsoft Windows 8, 8.1

Tablet And Embedded Operating Systems

Windows 10 IoT Enterprise
Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry
Windows Embedded 8 Standard
Windows Embedded Enterprise 7
Windows Embedded POSReady 7
Windows Embedded Standard 7
Windows Embedded Compact 7

Server Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows Server 2022
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Core
Microsoft Windows Server 2019
Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Core
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Microsoft Windows Server 2012

For Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 7, TCP/IP, Filter Manager, and Windows Installer must all be enabled.

Patch Manager

Workstation Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows 11
Microsoft Windows 10 version 1607 and later
Microsoft Windows 8.1
Microsoft Windows 8
Microsoft Windows 7

Server Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows Server 2022
Microsoft Windows Server 2012
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2
Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Microsoft Windows Server 2019

The following operating systems are not supported with N-able N-central patch manager:

Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Vista
Microsoft Windows 10 Home Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Microsoft Windows Server 2008
Microsoft Windows 11 Home Edition (Monitoring status is supported)

Windows Update Agent

The minimum version of the Windows Update Agent (WUA) needs to be greater than 7.6.7600.320. The base NT build version of Windows should be 6.1 or later. Older versions of the base NT build cannot upgrade past version 7.6.7600.256 of the Windows Update Agent.

Automation Manager

Workstation Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows 11
Microsoft Windows 10 (32/64-bit)
Microsoft Windows 8.1 (32/64-bit)
Microsoft Windows 8 (32/64-bit)
Microsoft Windows 7 (32/64-bit)

Server Operating Systems

Microsoft Windows Server 2022
Microsoft Windows Server 2019
Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (32/64-bit)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (32/64-bit)
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (32/64-bit)

Disk Encryption Manager

Hyper-V Server 2012 R2	Hyper-V Server 2016
Windows 7 Enterprise	Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional	Windows 7 Ultimate

Windows 8 Enterprise	Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8 Pro with Media Center	Windows 8.1 Enterprise
Windows 8.1 Pro	Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center

Windows 10 Education	Windows 10 Enterprise
Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB	Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB
Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops	Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019
Windows 10 Pro	Windows 10 Pro Education
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise	Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard	Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation
Windows Server 2012 Datacenter	Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Windows Server 2012 Foundation	Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter
Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials	Windows Server 2012 R2 Foundation
Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard	Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Evaluation
Windows Server 2012 Standard

Windows Server 2016 Datacenter	Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Evaluation
Windows Server 2016 Essentials	Windows Server 2016 Standard
Windows Server 2016 Standard Evaluation

Windows Server 2019 Datacenter	Windows Server 2019 Essentials
Windows Server 2019 Standard	Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation

Windows Server Datacenter
Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials	Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard

Does Windows Server 2022 support Hyper V?

Nested virtualization is a feature that allows you to run Hyper-V inside of a Hyper-V virtual machine (VM). Windows Server 2022 brings support for nested virtualization using AMD processors, giving more choices of hardware for your environments. More information can be found at the nested virtualization documentation.

What is the latest version of Windows Server 2022?

Windows Server 2022 is the latest release in our Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). It builds on Windows Server 2019, our fastest adopted Windows Server ever. This release includes advanced multi-layer security, hybrid capabilities with Azure, and a flexible platform to modernize applications with containers.

Does Windows Server support RAID?

Usually, Windows Professional Edition and Windows Server Edition systems can support it. It is a trend, and you can flexibly set up software RAID via Windows Disk Manager.

Does Windows Server 2022 require UEFI?

Install Windows Server 2022 by using Dell EMC Lifecycle Controller. NOTE Installing Microsoft Windows Server 2022 using operating system media is supported only in UEFI mode.