Technical white paper Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers with NVIDIA GPUs and VMware vSphere How to configure Dell EMC PowerEdge Servers with NVIDIA GPUs and VMware vSphere Abstract This white paper describes how to configure Dell EMC PowerEdge servers with Nvidia GPUs and VMware vSphere. Also included are a support matrix of GPUs supported on Dell EMC PowerEdge servers, as well as GPU-specific troubleshooting information.
Revisions Revisions Date Description March 2020 Initial release Acknowledgements This paper was produced by the following: Author: Hypervisor Engineering Support: Shiva Katta Other: Sherry Keller, and Ramya D R, IDD team The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Table of contents Table of contents Revisions.............................................................................................................................................................................2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents .................................................................................................
Executive summary Executive summary Virtualization technology removes hardware from the network equation, and allows you to host multiple and varied workloads that share the same hardware. In its infancy, virtualization technology was limited to CPU, memory, storage, and network applications. Now, however, virtualization can also benefit graphic workload balancing.
Use cases for NVIDIA GPUs in vSphere 1 Use cases for NVIDIA GPUs in vSphere The use cases discussed here are divided into VDI and non-VDI. NVIDIA GPUs are further classified into those used by multiple users and those operating in dedicated mode. This technical white paper briefs about configuring the NVIDIA GPUs with vSphere for various. The features available in vSphere with NVIDIA GPUs on the Dell EMC PowerEdge servers are: • • • 1.
Use cases for NVIDIA GPUs in vSphere 1.3 VM DirectPath I/O GPU In this approach, a GPU is assigned as a PCIe pass-through device to the VM. The guest operating system deployed in a VM can access the GPU directly and can offload all the relevant computational or graphical operations to the GPU. The vGPU is not shared across the VMs. Performance is expected to be closer to a bare-metal deployment.
Hardware and software requirements 2 Hardware and software requirements The hardware and software requirements for configuring the GPUs are: • • 2.1 Hardware: o PowerEdge servers must be certified for VMware vSphere ESXi. See VMware HCL.
Hardware and software requirements For more information, see the VMware Horizon 7 Documentation at docs.vmware.com. 2.2 Configuring vGPU To configure the Windows VM with direct access to a GPU, complete the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Update the server with the supported BIOS or firmware and NVIDIA GPU. Install vSphere ESXi and enable the NVIDIA GPU. Download and install the supported vGPU Manager on the ESXi host. Build the Horizon infrastructure.
Hardware and software requirements 2.3 Configuring VM DirectPath I/O GPU To configure a Windows VM with direct access to the GPU, complete the following steps: 1. Update the server with the supported BIOS or firmware and NVIDIA GPU. 2. Install vSphere ESXi and enable NVIDIA GPU for pass-through, or Virtual DirectPath I/O. 3. Configure and Deploy VM with Linux operating systems preferably for HPC and machine learning workloads. 4. Assign the GPU to the VM. 5.
GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers 3 GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers Note: The below section lists the various support matrixes for the GPU features as they relate to the supported server and ESXi versions. 3.
GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers 3.
GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers 3.
GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers 3.4 vGPU support matrix 3.4.
GPU support matrix with Dell EMC PowerEdge servers 3.5 vDGA support matrix 3.5.
3.5.
Known issues and resolution 4 Known issues and resolution This section focuses on the known issues for configuring the GPU features described in this document. 1. PowerEdge R730 with NVIDIA Grid K2 and ESXi 6.x, a Windows 7 64-bit VM configured with vDGA fails to boot and display BSOD. - Resolution: This is a known issue and to overcome the VM crash, set pciPassthru0.msiEnabled is set to False in the VMs VMX file. By default, pciPassthru0.msiEnabled is set to True. 2.
Known issues and resolution 7. On the PowerEdge R740 with NVIDIA Tesla T4 and installed with ESXi 6.7 and attempt to list the NVIDIA GPU in Ispci command fails. - Resolution: This behavior may be due to multiple reasons. Check the following: • Ensure that both the PSUs are plugged-in and working. • Ensure that the correct wattage of PSU is used for the GPU configuration. • Ensure that the GPU power cables are connected. • Ensure that the GPU is not configured as a pass-through device in the ESXi host. 8.
