Elasticsearch/Kibana Service Startup Failure Due to Unsupported CPU Instruction Set

Elastic Search
1

Description:

We are facing an issue while starting the Elasticsearch/Kibana service on the current virtual machine. The application fails during startup because the host CPU does not support the instruction sets required by the bundled executable/image.

Error Observed:
```root@virtkibana:~# journalctl -u elasticsearch.service --no-pager
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd[1]: Starting elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch...
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd-entrypoint[8297]: The current machine does not support all of the following CPU features that are required by the image: [CX8, CMOV, FXSR, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4_1, SSE4_2, POPCNT, LZCNT, AVX, AVX2, BMI1, BMI2, FMA, F16C].
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd-entrypoint[8297]: Please rebuild the executable with an appropriate setting of the -march option.
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd[1]: Failed to start elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch.

Log Reference:

May 08 04:19:04 virtkibana systemd-entrypoint[8297]:
Please rebuild the executable with an appropriate setting of the -march option.

Impact:

  • Elasticsearch/Kibana service is unable to start.

  • Portal functionality is unavailable.

  • Deployment on the current VM/host is blocked.

Probable Cause:
The deployed Elasticsearch/Kibana image or binary was built targeting newer CPU architectures requiring advanced instruction sets (AVX/AVX2 and related features), which are not available on the current VM host CPU.

Required Action:

  • Verify CPU compatibility on the VM/hypervisor host.

  • Use a compatible Elasticsearch/Kibana version built for older CPU architectures, OR

  • Rebuild the executable/image using a lower -march target compatible with the current hardware, OR

  • Migrate the workload to a host supporting AVX/AVX2 instructions.

Environment:

  • Service: Elasticsearch / Kibana

  • Host Type: Virtual Machine

  • OS: Linux

  • Startup Method: systemd

Severity:
High – Service unavailable.

Expected Result:
Elasticsearch/Kibana services should start successfully without CPU compatibility errors.

2

we have the same issue.

3

I had the same issue and posted about it here: Elasticseach 9.4.0 Won't Start on Nehalem CPU "does not support all the following CPU features"

There is a pull request to fix the issue: Pin server-launcher native -march to x86-64-v2 by JVerwolf · Pull Request #148542 · elastic/elasticsearch · GitHub

4

I have tested the latest version 9.4.1 and still getting same error.

root@ubuntu-elasticsearch:~# apt list --installed | grep -i elastic

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

elasticsearch/stable,now 9.4.1 amd64 [installed]
root@ubuntu-elasticsearch:~# systemctl status elasticsearch.service
× elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /etc/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service.d
└─custom.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2026-05-14 08:01:24 UTC; 13s ago
Docs: https://www.elastic.co
Process: 8234 ExecStart=/usr/share/elasticsearch/bin/systemd-entrypoint -p ${PID_DIR}/elasticsearch.pid --quiet (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 8234 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
CPU: 38ms

May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd[1]: Starting elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch...
May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd-entrypoint[8234]: The current machine does not support all of the following CPU features that are required by the image: [CX8, CMOV, FXSR, MMX, >
May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd-entrypoint[8234]: Please rebuild the executable with an appropriate setting of the -march option.
May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd[1]: elasticsearch.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
May 14 08:01:24 ubuntu-elasticsearch systemd[1]: Failed to start elasticsearch.service - Elasticsearch.

5

As given above, there's a parallel thread on this topic, found here

As noted there, 9.4.1 does not contain a fix, 9.4.2 might, and the pull request includes a (better temporary) workaround if needed. Maybe also best to watch that other thread for updates going forward.

6

I tried the mention possible solution but it is not working.

7

This looks exactly like a CPU instruction set mismatch issue rather than a service configuration problem.

If the VM host doesn’t support AVX/AVX2, newer Elasticsearch/Kibana builds will fail to start because they’re compiled with higher -march targets.

At this point, the quickest fix is usually either:

  • confirm CPU flags on the host (lscpu | grep avx)

  • downgrade to an Elasticsearch/Kibana version built for older architectures, or

  • move the deployment to a VM that supports AVX/AVX2

Rebuilding with a lower -march can work too, but in most cases upstream binaries are the real constraint here, so version alignment is usually the cleaner solution.

8

Currently, our virtual environment does not support AVX/AVX2, and we have also downgraded the Elasticsearch version. Could you please confirm whether this issue will be resolved in a future release, or if all future Elasticsearch packages will require CPUs with AVX support? If the latter is the case, migrating the VM to hardware that supports AVX would be mandatory.