Citrix Linux VDA now supports Ubuntu 16.04

Last year I wrote a blog on how to find out which Linux distributions are supported by VMware/Citrix, at the time I struggled to find some of the Citrix info as there wasn’t a master list in their documentation. With the recent 7.12 XenDesktop release though this changed and there’s now a nice clear list in the System Requirement Documentation (at the time of writing for 7.12), this reads:

NVIDIA GRID: More info on vApps and VPC/vWS Licensing

Check out Luke Wignall’s blog on NVIDIA GRID licensing and other GRID topics!

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:

• https://recidivistic1.wordpress.com/2016/08/25/nvidia-grid-software-licensing/

Luke answers how many licenses and what type you will need for various use cases, answering questions such as:

Significant leaps in virtualized NVIDIA vGPU monitoring

Read the documentation – the User Guide provided alongside the managmeent SDK is really comprehensive!

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 26^th 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!).

NVIDIA GRID – A Guide on GPU Metric Integration for Citrix XenServer

Just a quick blog aimed at those looking to develop GPU hypervisor monitoring products by integrating the NVIDIA GPU metrics exposed by XenServer via their APIs. Really it’s a bit of a guide as to where to find the information provided by Citrix.

Background

NVIDIA GRID – new documentation and videos June/July available!

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:

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).

More Lenovo Servers Support NVIDIA GPUs Including the M60

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:

• https://lenovopress.com/lp0068-lenovo-system-x3650-m5-e5-2600-v4#gpu-adapters

Also recently listed is the x3500 M5:

• https://lenovopress.com/tips1242-system-x3500-m5#gpu-adapters

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.

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.

GPU Sizer – Community tool seeks Beta Testers

A few lucky folks at E2EVC, a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas, got a sneak preview of a couple of new community tools for analyzing application usage of NVIDIA GPUS. I have already blogged about Jeremy Main’s GPU Profiler (read about it – here).

The other tool is one from community GPU and virtualisation expert Magnar Johnsen from Norway, who is well-known in the Virtualisation communities for his GPU-enabled deployments and tools. Magnar was in fact one of the community users who we invited to NVIDIA to speak to our engineers and product managers about the future direction of our products and user needs.

GPU Profiler – NVIDIA Community Tool

Just a quick blog to highlight a new community tool written as a hobby project by one of our GRID Solution Architects, Jeremy Main.  As a community tool this isn’t supported by NVIDIA and is provided as is. The advantages of releasing this in this way is that Jeremy has provided the tool on github where partners, customers and the community can access it, discuss enhancements and report bugs.