SCS KB 1016: Product cannot be installed because CPU does not support RdRand instruction

Applies to:

• Acronis SCS Cyber Backup 12.5 Hardened Edition

Use Case

This article covers the details about the "Cannot install the product on this machine because the CPU does not support the RdRand instruction.

Process

Our Acronis Cyber Backup SCS Hardened Edition uses special CPU instructions to generate high quality entropy for random numbers used in encryption.  This helps make the encryption more secure and harder to attack.

Most Intel CPUs since 2012 ("Ivy Bridge") have this special instruction set. It is listed as Intel® AES New Instructions  and you can check processors here: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark.html#@Processors

Most AMD CPUs since 2015 have this special instruction set.

VMWare introduced support for it with Virtual Hardware Version 9 https://communities.vmware.com/thread/471512

If you are running on a virtualization platform you will need to check whether your virtualization support pass through of RdRand.