Veeam has issued an advisory warning that Software Appliance virtual machines running on hosts with certain AMD EPYC processors may intermittently fail to boot. The Software Appliance is a pre-configured, Linux-based virtual machine that lets administrators run Veeam Backup & Replication on Linux without manually installing dependencies or configuring the software.

Root cause

To meet corporate and government security requirements, the appliance’s Linux kernel runs integrated health and cryptographic checks in FIPS mode during early boot. One of these is a jitterentropy health test. According to Veeam, that test intermittently fails on some AMD EPYC processors, including the EPYC 7262, 7302, and 7F72. When it fails, the kernel halts the boot process with a kernel panic. The problem can surface after any reboot, including one that follows an update installing a new kernel.

The issue originates in the Linux kernel version used by the appliance and affects Software Appliance version 13.1 and later. Affected systems display the error “Kernel panic – not syncing: jitterentropy: Initialization failed with host not compliant with requirements: 9.”

Recommended mitigations

  • Redeploy the appliance to a Linux host with an unaffected processor.
  • If redeployment is not possible, disable automatic updates for the appliance and install updates manually while monitoring the VM through its reboot.
  • If a kernel panic occurs, power off the virtual machine and power it back on. Restarting the guest operating system does not recover the VM.

Veeam says that once the appliance boots successfully, no further errors are expected and Veeam Backup & Replication operation is not affected.

Separate Linux kernel flaw

In a related disclosure, Veeam also reported that some of its products are affected by a critical Linux kernel vulnerability, CVE-2026-98432, in the IPv4 TCP networking code. The flaw can allow remote, unauthenticated attackers to execute commands as root on servers running Multipath TCP (MPTCP) listeners. Veeam says it has fixed the issue for some impacted components and is distributing patched kernels through private fixes or the Veeam Updater.

Administrators running Veeam Software Appliance deployments should review the advisory, plan redeployment or manual update procedures for affected AMD EPYC hosts, and confirm that kernel patches for CVE-2026-98432 have been applied where relevant.