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:

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 vGPU: 512MB profiles, Win 10, framebuffer – new support article

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front over the last month or so – a long vacation coupled with a slight role change – but also working on some internal support documentation around 512MB profiles which is now published.

As ever the NVIDIA Enterprise Support KB articles are living documents and you should check the main document here: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4238/ at the time of reading for up-to-date NVIDIA sactioned advice.

However I thought it would be nice to highlight the availability and reproduce the article as it stands today. The search facility on the KB system is reasonably good and it’s always worth checking for new articles and searching for answers: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/home/.

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:

NVIDIA GRID – RDSH licensing (including XenApp)

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.

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!).

Optimising TCP for Citrix HDX/ICA including Netscaler

Marius Sandbu – NGCA (NVIDIA GRID Community Advisor)  aka Clever Viking!

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.

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:

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.