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: 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: 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.

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

Esri ArcGIS and NVIDIA GRID – An awesome list of blogs to find out more

About a month ago I wrote about an amazing webinar I’d seen detailing how South Florida Water Management had leveraged Cisco, VMware and NVIDIA GRID to solve problems with their original physical workstation usage of Esri GIS software. A must read – here.

A response to APIs, GPUs, and drivers: CAD graphical conspiracy?

I’ve been working at NVIDIA for 7 weeks now. I’ve never worked for a GPU or hardware vendor before. I started off as an Astrophysicist in academia, became a CAD kernel engineer (Parasolid kernel at Siemens PLM) working on applications such as Solidworks, Siemens NX, Ansys Workbench etc. Then I moved on to hypervisor and VDI engineering including virtualized GPUs at Citrix working on XenDesktop/XenApp and XenServer. All my background and experience is in enterprise software development and I still mostly follow CAD and 3D blogs because that’s my passion and experience.

So how much different is working at a hardware (GPU) vendor than to Citrix or Siemens PLM?

Ummm… to be honest half the time I’m not sure I’ve changed jobs. My days are still filled with a lot of very familiar questions and problems; “Is Autodesk certified for use with vSphere when using NVIDIA vGPU?”, “How many Catia users can I put on a Dell R730 server?”, “What bandwidth should I expect when using hidden-line mode?”, “What is the SLA on reported bugs?”, “Is my GRID K2 card supported with Citrix XenServer?”….

How-to-video: Enabling NVIDIA vGPU acceleration for HP RGS in a VMware vSphere VM including Multi-monitor Support

Jason Southern (our resident NVIDIA how-to-guy) has just released a new video – “Quick run through how to set up a vGPU enabled VM on vSphere to use the vGPU in an RGS session, and how to achieve multi monitor support.”. It’s available – here. This isn’t as simple as it could be and HP and NVIDIA are continuing to work on making it simpler, in the meantime HP has worked with Jason to provide some utilities (including some based on devcon.exe); many thanks to Gary at HP!

Another 5 minute solution from our Solution Architecture team here in the UK!

Thanks Jason + Gary!