Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View

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You can set the 3D Renderer option to any of the following settings: Manage using vSphere Client,
Automatic, or Hardware. See also “Video RAM Configuration Options for the 3D Renderer,” on
page 128.
Automatic uses hardware acceleration if there is a capable and available hardware GPU in the ESXi
host. If a hardware GPU is not available, the virtual machine uses software 3D rendering for any 3D
tasks.
Additional Requirements for Using Soft 3D
To support software 3D rendering, a pool must meet these additional requirements:
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The virtual machines must run on ESXi 5.0 or later hosts and be managed by vCenter Server 5.0 or later
software.
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The machines must be virtual hardware version 8 or later.
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You must set the 3D Renderer option to Software. See also “Video RAM Configuration Options for the
3D Renderer,” on page 128.
Video RAM Configuration Options for the 3D Renderer
When you enable the 3D Renderer setting, if you select the Automatic, Software, or Hardware option, you
can configure the amount of VRAM that is assigned to the virtual machines in the pool by moving the slider
in the Configure VRAM for 3D guests dialog box. The minimum VRAM size is 64MB. The default VRAM
amount depends on the virtual hardware version:
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For virtual hardware version 8 (vSphere 5.0) virtual machines, the default VRAM size is 64MB, and you
can configure a maximum size of 128MB.
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For virtual hardware version 9 (vSphere 5.1) and 10 (vSphere 5.5 Update 1) virtual machines, the
default VRAM size is 96MB, and you can configure a maximum size of 512MB.
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For virtual hardware version 11 (vSphere 6.0) virtual machines, the default VRAM size is 96MB, and
you can configure a maximum size of 128MB. In vSphere 6.0 and later virtual machines, this setting
refers only to the amount of display memory in the graphics card and therefore has a lower maximum
setting than earlier virtual hardware versions, which included both display memory and guest memory
for storing 3D objects.
The VRAM settings that you configure in View Administrator take precedence over the VRAM settings that
can be configured for the virtual machines in vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client, unless you select the
Manage using vSphere Client option.
For more information about the Automatic, Software, or Hardware 3D rendering options, see “3D Renderer
Options,” on page 128.
3D Renderer Options
The 3D Renderer setting for desktop pools provides options that let you configure graphics rendering in
different ways.
The following table describes the differences between the various types of 3D rendering options available in
View Administrator but does not provide complete information for configuring virtual machines and ESXi
hosts for Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration (vSGA), Virtual Dedicated Graphics Acceleration (vDGA), or
NVIDIA GRID vGPU (shared GPU hardware acceleration). These tasks must be done with vSphere Web
Client before you attempt to create desktop pools in View Administrator. vDGA and NVIDIA GRID vGPU
require a similar setup in vSphere. For instructions about these tasks, see the VMware white paper about
graphics acceleration.
Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View
128 VMware, Inc.