Architecture & Supported OS
Introduction
Xshield agent is a low-impact software that can be installed on servers and endpoints running modern (and some legacy) operating systems. This document outlines the supported list of operating systems and hardware architectures.
The agent software has two separate implementations:
- For Modern Operating Systems: Deployed on modern Linux and Windows operating systems and uses Windows Filtering Platform (Windows) and nf_tables (Linux) for host firewall programming.
- For Other Operating Systems: Deployed on AIX, Solaris, and RHEL 6.x (legacy) Operating Systems. Host firewall programming is implemented using native tools such as iptables (Linux), TCP/IP filters (AIX) and Packet Filter (Solaris).
Windows agents also use the npcap package (part of the agent installation package) for collecting network flow communication meta data. Linux agents use libpcap.
Server Agents
Hardware Architecture Support
- Primary support for x86_64 (X86 64-bit architecture)
- ARM64 support for specific Linux versions, including AWS Graviton
- No support for:
- Windows 32-bit operating systems (Example: Windows 2008 R1, Windows 2003, Windows XP etc)
- Solaris on SPARC hardware architecture (Only x86 architecture)
Supported Operating Systems
Linux Distributions
| Platform | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| RHEL 4.x, 5.x | No | - |
| RHEL 6.x (Legacy) | Yes | iptables based |
| RHEL 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 | No | nf-table support requires 4.x Kernel (available from 7.3) |
| RHEL ≥ 7.3 and < 8.0 | Yes* | *Only for vCloud VMs. Not supported on Azure VMs |
| RHEL 8.0 and above | Yes | - |
| CentOS 7.x and above | Yes | *For CentOS 7.0, Supported from kernel version 3.10.0-229 |
| Rocky Linux 8.x, 9.x | Yes | - |
| Oracle Linux 6.x (Legacy) | Yes | iptables based |
| Oracle Linux 7.x and above | Yes | *For Oracle 7.0, Supported from kernel version 3.10.0-229 |
| Debian 7.7, 9 | Yes | - |
| Ubuntu 18, 20, 22, 24 | Yes | - |
| SUSE 12 | No | No support for nftables |
| SUSE 15 | Yes | - |
| Amazon Linux 2023 & Amazon Linux 2 | Yes | Supported on Graviton |
| Huwaei Cloud Euler OS 2.0 | Yes | - |
| FreeBSD 12.3 | Yes | IPFW Firewall |
Unix Systems
| Platform | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| AIX 7.2, 7.3 | Yes | Support only on ppc6 and ppc8 |
| Solaris 11.0 (x86) | Yes | No support for Sparc architecture |
Windows Server
| Platform | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Server 2003 | No | No support for WFP |
| Windows Server 2008 Enterprise | No | No support for WFP |
| Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008 Standard | Yes | - |
| Windows Server 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022, 2025 | Yes | - |
User Agents
The Xshield agent is available for modern desktop operating systems. Note that there is no agent support for Linux Desktop versions.
MacOS Support
- Available for both x86_64 and arm64 (M1/M2) processors
- Minimum supported OS version: MacOS 11
Supported Desktop Operating Systems
| Platform | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 7 and below | No | No future support planned |
| Windows 10 and above | Yes | 64-bit support only |
| MacOS 11 and above | Yes | Supports both x86_64 and arm64 |