The requirements for Nessus vary for the different components present in it, as well as the type of license available and its usage.
The following table depicts the Nessus hardware requirements:
|
Scenario |
Minimum recommended hardware |
|
Nessus scanning up to 50,000 hosts |
CPU: 4 x 2 GHz cores Memory: 4 GB RAM (8 GB RAM recommended) Disk space: 30 GB |
|
Nessus scanning more than 50,000 hosts |
CPU: 8 x 2 GHz cores Memory: 8 GB RAM (16 GB RAM recommended) Disk space: 30 GB (additional space may be needed for reporting) |
|
Nessus Manager with up to 10,000 agents |
CPU: 4 x 2 GHz cores Memory: 16 GB RAM Disk space: 30 GB (additional space may be needed for reporting) |
|
Nessus Manager with up to 20,000 agents |
CPU: 8 x 2 GHz cores Memory: 64 GB RAM Disk space: 30 GB (additional space may be needed for reporting) |
- Nessus Agents: This is designed to consume less memory, as the process is low priority and yields to the CPU whenever asked. Nessus Agents can be installed on a virtual machine that meets the requirements specified in the following table:
|
Hardware |
Minimum requirement |
|
Processor |
1 dual-core CPU |
|
Processor speed |
< 1 GHz |
|
RAM |
< 1 GB |
|
Disk space |
< 1 GB |
|
Disk speed |
15-50 IOPS |
- Virtual machines: Nessus Agents supports the following versions of macOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems:
|
Operating system |
Supported versions (Nessus Agents) |
|
Linux
|
Debian 7, 8, and 9 - i386 Debian 7, 8, and 9 - AMD64 Red Hat ES 6/CentOS 6/Oracle Linux 6 (including Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) - i386 Red Hat ES 6/CentOS 6/Oracle Linux 6 (including Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) - x86_64 Red Hat ES 7/CentOS 7/Oracle Linux 7 - x86_64 Fedora 24 and 25 - x86_64 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, and 16.04 - i386 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, and 16.04 - AMD64 |
|
Windows |
Windows 7, 8, and 10 - i386 Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, 7, 8, and 10 - x86-64 |
|
macOS X |
macOS X 10.8 - 10.13 |
Nessus Manager supports the following versions of macOS, Linux, and Windows operating systems:
|
Operating System |
Supported Versions (Nessus Manager) |
|
Linux
|
Debian 7, 8, and 9/Kali Linux 1, 2017.1, and Rolling - i386 Debian 7, 8, and 9/Kali Linux 1, 2017.1, and Rolling - AMD64 Red Hat ES 6/CentOS 6/Oracle Linux 6 (including Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) - i386
Red Hat ES 6/CentOS 6/Oracle Linux 6 (including Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) - x86_64
Red Hat ES 7/CentOS 7/Oracle Linux 7 (including Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel) - x86_64 FreeBSD 10 and 11 - AMD64 Fedora 24 and 25 - x86_64 SUSE 11 and 12 Enterprise - i586 SUSE 11 and 12 Enterprise - x86_64 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, and 16.04 - i386 Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04, and 16.04 - AMD64 |
|
Windows |
Windows 7, 8, and 10 - i386 Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2, Server 2016, 7, 8, and 10 - x86-64 |
|
macOS X |
macOS X 10.8 - 10.13 |
- Browsers: Nessus supports the following browsers:
- Google Chrome (50 and above)
- Apple Safari (10 and above)
- Mozilla Firefox (50 and above)
- Internet Explorer (11 and above)
- PDF reports: The Nessus .pdf report generation feature requires the latest version of Oracle Java or OpenJDK. Install Oracle Java or OpenJDK prior to installing Nessus.