Clarification needed for LVQ and Leanvec and which Redis version

[Baalakay]

Thoroughly confused about how to get LVQ and/or Leanvec working and on which Redis version. Tons of blogs and docs say it’s in Redis 8.2. Assuming this was specific to Redis Open Source 8.2, because the latest Redis Enterprise that can be downloaded from Redis is 8.0.2. Then saw another doc saying it’s been removed from Open Source 8.2. So tried on Enterprise 8.0.2 using the Redis RHEL AWS AMI (on Intel 4 instance). Installed SVS v.0.0.9, no option for either, just fallback to GlobalSQ8. Then see examples here (https://intel.github.io/ScalableVectorSearch/start.html#installation) of LVQ under a section that begins with “Installing SVS is simple. We test on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, but it should work on any Linux distribution or macOS.” which suggests it can work on non-Intel instances? Would appreciate some guidance for someone new to Redis.

[mihaic]

Hello, @Baalakay. Thank you for your interest in LVQ and LeanVec. They are indeed available in Redis, starting with version 8.2. For the non-enterprise Redis, you need to compile Redis yourself according to the Redis instructions (basically understand that you must follow the RSALv2 license and set BUILD_INTEL_SVS_OPT):
https://github.com/redis/redis?tab=readme-ov-file#running-redis-with-the-query-engine-and-optional-proprietary-Intel-SVS-VAMANA-optimisations

You do not need to install SVS separately; it is automatically downloaded and used when building Redis.

[Baalakay]

Hi @mihaic , thanks for the quick reply! I'm still not clear though, does it need to be run on an Intel platform?

[mihaic]

Yes. On other platforms you will see the fallback to GlobalSQ8. However, for the setup you described, you should not see the fallback after you compile Redis according to the instructions I linked.

[Baalakay]

@mihaic - Sorry for asking this question in the same thread but still trying to figure this all being new to Redis. Does recompiling from source per the link you shared also install the Redis Query Engine or do I need to install Redis Stack separately as per this link?

https://redis.io/docs/latest/develop/ai/redisvl/install/

[mihaic]

No worries. Compiling will give you both the redis-server executable and the redisearch.so module. You can run them straight from the build directory. Installing or distributing them is a different conversation quite off-topic for this issue.

[Baalakay]

Thank you! Finally got it working. Had to abandon Cursor and eventually RTFM and install and configure myself, lol. But understand so much more now. Only problem I couldn't resolve is lack of libsystemd-dev even after installing and recompiling with it (Debian 12). It would never link to the redis-server binary (verified by "ldd /usr/local/bin/redis-server | grep systemd" after a clean and full recompile/make). So I ended setting "supervised no" in the redis.conf and set Type=simple in the redis.service along with commenting out the PIDFile, and adding the RuntimeDirectory directive as below.

`[Unit]
Description=Redis Server
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis-server /usr/src/redis-8.2.3/redis.conf
Type=simple

PIDFile=/var/run/redis_6379.pid <-- COMMENT THIS LINE OUT

RuntimeDirectory=redis <-- ADD THIS LINE
Restart=always
User=redis
Group=redis

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
`