A CAD Bunny's Big Adventure Through Virtualisation… frolicking with GPUs along the way – by Rachel Berry
Just a quick blog to clear up some FAQs on Microsoft Hyper-V support and NVIDIA GRID.
The GRID 4.1 release support matrix details support for Windows Server OSs. Windows Server OSs also include the Hyper-V role and support for the Hyper-V hypervisor.
Continue reading “NVIDIA GRID and Microsoft Windows Server OSs and Hyper-V”
I was very pleased yesterday to see Pat Lee from VMware’s PM team tweet about this yesterday…
It’s something we knew VMware had added to vSphere 2016, vSphere 2016 supported in the GRID 4.1 (Nov 2016) release. As a VMware implemented feature this was something we at NVIDIA had to wait for them to announce. I think there have been a few problems with the documentation update staging which is why this has been a rather quiet feature release. I’ll update this blog with links to the documentation when it becomes available which should be soon!
But since Pat has let the cat out of the bag…. Probably best to answer a few basic questions straing away.
NVIDIA GRID vGPU was launched in 2013 to enable applications to virtualize GPU resource and share GPUs to enable super-responsive graphics at a cost-effective price. Autodesk applications benefit greatly from GPU acceleration and over the last 3 years we’ve seen a huge number of customers deploy Autodesk applications such as Maya, Inventor, Moldflow, Revit and Autocad with our technologies.
This week NVIDIA is yet again at the amazing Autodesk University and I thought it would be nice to highlight some of the benefits of these technologies via a review of 4 of my personal favourite real customer implementations and stories and what they achieved virtualizing Autodesk applications. Continue reading “Autodesk Applications – Anywhere, Anytime Mobility on Any Device! Powered by NVIDIA GRID technologies.”
I wrote a blog on RDSH (including XenApp) licensing and the options available with NVIDIA GRID vGPU and GPU-passthrough a few weeks ago, which you can read – here (including support for multi-monitor and resolutions). Since then my colleague Luke has added some more information in a blog where he outlines various case studies including many on vApps, which is worth a read here:
Luke answers how many licenses and what type you will need for various use cases, answering questions such as: Continue reading “NVIDIA GRID: More info on vApps and VPC/vWS Licensing”
I’ve had a few questions about what licensing is needed under the GRID 2.0 and up software licensing for the M60/M10/M6 GPUs for RDSH solutions such as XenApp. I think the confusion arises because it’s possible to use a number of GPU/vGPU different profiles for a server OS VM. The key point is to remember that the licensing is always per user.
Continue reading “NVIDIA GRID – RDSH licensing (including XenApp)”
Today NVIDIA announced a new monitoring SDK / API incorporated into its GRID vGPU products as part of their GRID August 2016 (4.0) release. This will be available from Friday 26th August 2016 as a software release for existing hardware, greatly enhancing the functionality for existing as well as new customers. (You can read the announcement here).
NVIDIA has broken ranks with traditional hardware-only GPU models and recognized enterprises needs software to manage and monitor GPUs as a component of the data centre. Software licensing has enabled existing customers to benefit from new features with fully supported software, directly supported by NVIDIA (you wouldn’t run your Microsoft OS or CAD software unsupported!). Continue reading “Significant leaps in virtualized NVIDIA vGPU monitoring”
The TCP implementation within Citrix HDX/ICA protocol used by XenDesktop and XenApp and also Citrix Netscaler is pretty Vanilla to the original TCP/IP standards and definition and the out-of-the-box configuration usually does a good job on LAN. However, for WAN scenarios particularly with higher latencies and certain kinds of data (file transfers), Citrix deployments can benefit greatly from some tuning.
Continue reading “Optimising TCP for Citrix HDX/ICA including Netscaler”
The NVIDIA Knowledge base is still going from strength to strength. Since GRID moved to a software and fully-supported enterprise model there has been an acceleration in the information being published there that should carry on long-term.
Known issues, workarounds, how-to-guides and links to other places to find information on NVIDIA products including GRID and vGPU.
Yet MORE NEW articles were released in June/July: Continue reading “NVIDIA GRID – new documentation and videos June/July available!”
I was recently involved in a support inquiry where a user wanted to know if NVIDIA GRID vGPU was available on Linux VDAs with the Linux guest OS, OpenSUSE LEAP (the answer at the time of writing is that it’s NOT!). Finding the answer was a lot harder than I expected as both VMware and Citrix documentation took a bit of hunting around.
Much of the marketing around Linux VDA’s mentions support for “SUSE”, “CentOS” or other genres of Linux, such as this blog. It is important that customers check both their hypervisor and VDI solutions official support matrix as both Citrix and VMware only certify, QA and support specific versions of Linux Guest OSs (usually only enterprise supported versions). Continue reading “NVIDIA GRID: Linux Guest OS support for Linux distributions on Citrix and VMware”
Lenovo have recently qualified and announced support for more NVIDIA GPUs for several servers including the x3650 M5 (E5-2600 v4), details can be found on Lenovo’s site, here:
Also recently listed is the x3500 M5:
This means Lenovo have worked with NVIDIA to test and certify that both parties hardware, firmware and software is fully-compatible, thermally and electrically stable. Continue reading “More Lenovo Servers Support NVIDIA GPUs Including the M60”
Virtually Visual 