VMWare ESXi announce High Availability (HA) for NVIDIA GRID vGPU VMs with vSphere 6.5

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.

What is High Availability (HA)?

NVIDIA GRID: Linux Guest OS support for Linux distributions on Citrix and VMware

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).

New Cisco Validated Design featuring UCS B200 M4 with NVIDIA GRID M6 vGPU – available now!

It’s great to see a new validated design released by Cisco in recent weeks. Particularly as this features the NVIDIA GRID M6 options for blade servers to enable virtualized GPU-accelerations (vGPU). This reference architecture joins other available for UCS but in particular features a reference blueprint for Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp 7.7 and VMware vSphere 6.0 for 5000 Seats. Key features include

• Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp 7.7.
• Built on Cisco UCS (including Cisco B200 M4 Blade Server) and Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
• with NetApp AFF 8080EX
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0 Update 1 Hypervisor Platform

Cisco have done a great job providing a comprehensive guide and reference for a full VDI/XenApp deployment that includes networking, storage and graphics acceleration considerations.

• You can read it here >> http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/unified_computing/ucs/UCS_CVDs/cisco_ucs_xd77esxi60u1_flexpod.pdf

 

Cisco-NVIDIA Relationship

There are plenty of case studies, whitepapers and webinar recording covering Cisco long-investment in NVIDIA GRID and vGPU too:

• Healthcare Whitepaper. Cisco, NetApp, NVIDIA GRID. NetApp Whitepaper.
• Media and Entertainment Whitepaper. Cisco, NetApp, NVIDIA GRID. NetApp Whitepaper.
• Oil and Gas Whitepaper. Cisco, NetApp, NVIDIA vGPU. NetApp Whitepaper.
• Cisco Rack Server C240 C3 Reference architecture for vGPU: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/servers-unified-computing/ucs-c-series-rack-servers/whitepaper_C11-732283.html
• BLDD Architects. VMware Horizon View +vSPhere. GRID K2, Cisco UCS C240M3, Windows7. Autodesk Revit, Navisworks, and AutoCAD, Bentley RAM, Trimble. NVIDIA Case Study.
• Butler County Community College. Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp. VMware vSphere. SolidWorks, AutoDesk Building Design Suite, Adobe® Creative Cloud. Cisco B200 M3 and C240 M3. Wyse Xenith 1-3’s and old desktop PCs used as thin and zero clients. GRID K2 cards. NVIDIA Case Study.
• Southwest Florida Water District. VMware Horizon View and vSPhere. NVIDIA GRID K2. ESRI ArcGis. Cisco C240.  NVIDIA Webinar. Review Blog.
• Corona-Norco School District; Cisco UCS C-series; Nimble Storage CS700; NVIDIA GRID K1; Autodesk AutoCAD; BYOD support; VMware vSphere 6 and Horizon View 6.2; Cisco Case Study.

VMWorld 2016 – VMware let users set the agenda! Go VMware!

VMware Democracy at VMworld – it seems you can vote for what sessions you’d like to see. I think this is a super idea as it allows the community, partners and customers to actually pre-screen the balance of talks and speakers.

This kind of openness where VMworld lets their community see what has been submitted (and subsequently rejected/accepted) is great. It allows others to be aware of potential speakers who whilst might not be suitable for VMworld may fit other events/platforms better. It’s also a very strong message that this conference is for the users. Go VMware!

Confessions of a VMware Secret Agent – NVIDIA GRID and Blast Extreme – answers!

I have a new secret double life! I’ve recently been involved in doing the live chat and Q&A from NVIDIA GRID webinars. If you never attended our webinars but you are interested in NVIDIA GRID technologies you should consider trying it. They usually take the format of a 1+ hour Webinar hosted by internal technology specialists like Support, Readiness or Product Management. We will show live demos, hints and best practices. And also we have regular Guest Speakers or partners involved.

Our next webinar is on Thursday 12^th May 2016 (8am PST/11AM EST/4PM UK): “See How Virtual GPU Technology Can Increase User Productivity and Reduce IT Cost.”

• SIGN UP >> HERE