NAKIVO Backup & Replication v11.2.2: Full vSphere 9.1 + Proxmox VE 9.1/9.2 Support (and the Practical Bits That Matter)

Hey folks, Vladan here. If you follow my blog for a long time, you already know I keep a close eye on backup tools that stay current with the hypervisors we actually run — VMware, Proxmox, mixed environments, physical boxes, NAS appliances. NAKIVO has been on that list for years because it stays lean, agentless where it counts, and doesn’t force you into a second mortgage.

The latest update is v11.2.2 (released 13 August 2026, publicly pushed early September). It’s not a flashy “everything changed” major release. It’s the practical kind of point release that keeps your protection jobs alive while you upgrade the rest of the stack. Full support for VMware vSphere 9.1, full support for Proxmox VE 9.1 and 9.2, Real-Time Replication now covering vSphere 9.1, extended physical OS coverage, cleaner NAS licensing, and a handful of solid bug fixes. Exactly what you want when you’re in the middle of platform upgrades.

VMware vSphere 9.1 – Full Support (Including Real-Time Replication)

NAKIVO already had solid vSphere 9.0 coverage in earlier 11.2.x builds. With 11.2.2 you get full support for vSphere 9.1 (vCenter + ESXi + VDDK). That means you can upgrade your hosts and vCenter without parking backup jobs or dropping into limited/compatibility mode.

Key capabilities that continue to work as expected:

Agentless image-based backup and replication with CBT
Instant VM recovery, file-level and application-object recovery
Site Recovery orchestration (failover/failback + non-disruptive testing)
Source-side AES-256 encryption, immutable repositories (local Linux, S3-compatible, cloud, dedup appliances), air-gapped options, and pre-recovery malware scan

Above: Screenshot from the lab – deployment of the Real-Time replication service

The important addition for DR-focused shops is Real-Time Replication support for vSphere 9.1. Continuous replica updates with RPOs (and RTOs) as low as 1 second. This was already available for earlier vSphere versions; now it covers 9.1 as well. If you have critical VMs that need near-zero data loss, you can keep using the same Real-Time Replication jobs after the upgrade.

NAKIVO Real-Time Replication (RTR) for VMware is an asynchronous continuous data protection (CDP-style) mechanism that keeps replica VMs updated with source changes as they occur, targeting RPOs as low as 1 second.It is not synchronous replication (which would wait for every write to be acknowledged on both sides). Instead, it intercepts writes at the hypervisor level and streams changes to a target journal, then applies them to the replica according to the configured RPO.

The technology relies on VMware VAIO (vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering) filter (NAKIVO’s proprietary filter, Broadcom-certified).

For installing the IO filters and configuring the jobs, check the help section Online at Nakivo here. You'll find the step-by-steps there…. Once you have installed the IO filters, you'll need also install Journal Service which is a

“software module that installs into the target transporter and manages the I/O Journal created per VM disk and which is a set of records of I/O operations that keeps reference recovery points (snapshots of data changes made to a source VM created at the moment the replication job is stopped) of a replica VM and can be used for failover.”

Above: Screenshot from the lab – changing the acceptance level to Community supported for the installation of the VIB.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 compatibility is also listed — the vSphere components inside VCF 9.1 are covered, so existing backup, replication, Site Recovery and Real-Time Replication workflows remain usable.

Proxmox VE 9.1 and 9.2 – Full Agentless Support

Proxmox continues to grow as a VMware alternative (edge, cost-sensitive production, or deliberate migration target). NAKIVO had full 9.0 support and 9.1 compatibility earlier; 11.2.2 brings full support for both 9.1 and 9.2.

What that means in practice:

Agentless backup and replication at the host level (no guest agents)
Faster incremental backups using native change tracking
Instant recovery of entire VMs, templates, individual files or application objects
Built-in replication for quick recovery / failover scenarios
Same ransomware toolkit: immutability + encryption

If you’re running hybrid VMware + Proxmox (or planning a migration), you still manage everything from one console. I’ve covered the migration path before — back up the VMware VMs agentlessly, then restore directly to Proxmox. No export/import required. See my earlier notes on NAKIVO 11.2 with Proxmox 9.x and the more detailed 11.2 overview here.

A couple of Proxmox-specific fixes landed in this release (network mapping for replication and Transporter IP assignment issues).

Physical Machine OS Support Expanded

Useful if you still have physical servers or workstations in the mix. New supported guest OSes for physical backup include:

Debian 13
RHEL 10 / Rocky Linux 10 / Oracle Linux 10 / AlmaLinux 10
Ubuntu 25.10 and 26.04 LTS
SLES 16
Windows 10 IoT and Windows 11 26H1

Bare-metal recovery also gained support for RAID volumes as targets. Combined with the existing Flash Boot / P2V options, this keeps mixed environments manageable.

NAS Licensing and Deployment Tweaks

File-share (NAS) backup now has clearer TB-based subscription SKUs. The licensing UI was improved so you can actually see purchased vs consumed capacity. Makes capacity planning less of a guessing game as unstructured data grows.

You can also deploy NAKIVO directly on Buffalo NAS devices running Windows OS (in addition to the existing Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR, WD, NETGEAR, TrueNAS options). Running the Director + Onboard Transporter on the NAS itself remains one of the cleanest ways to turn storage hardware into a dedicated backup appliance. I wrote about that approach earlier this year — Turning Your NAS into a Backup Appliance with NAKIVO.Additional platform compatibility updates cover newer versions of ESXi, Nutanix, various Linux/Windows builds, Dell EMC, QNAP (including QuTS hero h6.0 and QTS 5.2.9), and Oracle RMAN. HPE StoreOnce VSA Gen4/Gen5 also received support bumps.

Other Fixes Worth Noting

The release notes list the usual reliability clean-ups: job scheduler behavior, shared-mailbox licensing edge cases, configuration export encryption, Nutanix skipped-disk handling, linked-job scheduling, etc. Nothing dramatic, but the kind of polish that reduces “why did that job skip?” tickets.

Note the platform announcements: ARM v7 is no longer supported for installation/updates starting with the 11.2 line, and Windows 8/8.1 support is being dropped in the next major (11.3). Plan accordingly if you’re still on older hardware or OS images.

Support Lifecycle Reminderv11.2.2 has End of Fix on 13 August 2027, security patches until 13 August 2028, and full End of Support on 13 August 2029. As always, stay within the supported window. Details are in the official Support Lifecycle Policy.

Practical Takeaway

If you’re already on NAKIVO and running (or planning) vSphere 9.1 or Proxmox VE 9.1/9.2, update to 11.2.2. The upgrade path is the usual one — check the release notes and the updating guide first. New to the product? The 15-day full-feature trial is still the easiest way to validate the agentless Proxmox support, Real-Time Replication behavior, and NAS deployment options in your own lab.

NAKIVO remains one of the more straightforward tools for heterogeneous environments — VMware, Proxmox, Hyper-V, Nutanix, physical, Microsoft 365, file shares — without forcing separate product silos or crazy licensing complexity. Deployment options stay flexible (Windows, Linux, VA, or directly on supported NAS).

Official product page and trial download: https://www.nakivo.com/

v11.2.2 release overview: Full release notes and help centre: https://helpcenter.nakivo.com/

NAKIVO Backup & Replication v11.2.2: Full vSphere 9.1 + Proxmox VE 9.1/9.2 Support (and the Practical Bits That Matter)

VMware vSphere 9.1 – Full Support (Including Real-Time Replication)