Starting with DDM 1.9, support for the AVX instruction set is mandatory. Please ensure your hypervisor or bare-metal hardware environment implements the AVX instructions before updating/installing DDM to/with version 1.9 or later.
What is AVX?
AVX stands for Advanced Vector Extensions, a CPU instruction set extension for the x86 instruction set, which is required by DDM 1.9 and later.
How to ‘enable’ AVX?
- For bare-metal environments, you can’t ‘enable/disable’ it in software. If your CPU supports it, AVX is typically ‘enabled’ by default.
- For hypervisor platforms, please ensure the host CPU supports AVX and that the hypervisor passes through (exposes) AVX feature flags to the virtual instance.
Take Proxmox as an example. To expose AVX feature flags, you will need to power off the virtual instance, select the processor type as ‘host’, and then power on the virtual instance.
How can I verify if my environment supports AVX?
- Confirm that AVX is implemented in your physical CPU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Vector_Extensions#CPUs_with_AVX
- If you are using a hypervisor platform, ensure the hypervisor passes through (exposes) AVX feature flags. Some hypervisors expose AVX to the virtual instance by default, while others may not. Refer to the section above on how to ‘enable’ AVX.
- (optional for new DDM installation) To confirm whether AVX is implemented in your current DDM/Linux environment, please:
- Go to the blue MAIN-MENU of DDM configuration,
- Select 'Q Quit' to quit the MAIN-MENU, and go into the command line.
- Type the command lscpu to display information about the CPU architecture.
- Look for ‘avx’ or ‘avx2’ in the ‘Flags’.
In the following example, we don't see 'avx' or 'avx2' in the Flags section, which indicates the virtual processor displayed does not implement AVX:
In the following example, you can see ‘avx’ in the Flags, which indicates that AVX is implemented:
What should I do before upgrading/installing DDM to/with version 1.9 or above?
-
(skip this step for new DDM installation) Download the DDM System Configuration as a backup
(DDM web interface> Settings> Updates & System Information> System Configuration> Download).
- Ensure your physical/host CPU supports AVX (for both bare-metal and hypervisor environments).
- If you are deploying DDM on a hypervisor platform, ensure the AVX feature flag has been passed through.
- (optional for new DDM installation) Use the command-line tool (lscpu) to ensure AVX instructions are implemented.
- Then, follow the instructions below to complete the subsequent steps of the DDM upgrade: