AMD GPU’s (NVv4-Series) VMs are now Generally Available in Azure
Hi all, I am excited to share that Microsoft have made NVv4 VM now general available in US South Central and Europe West regions.
I have been testing the NVv4 in Azure US South Central and West Europe for some months and performance is simply amazing. I am very excited Azure finally have GPU-P in production now and customers can benefits of having SR-IOV lowering the bar of enabling your virtual machine instance in Azure with GPU capability.
Customers who are doing EUC such as Microsoft WVD/RDS, Citrix CVAD, VMware Horizon, Nutanix XIframe, Parallels RAS, Teradici can now benefit of these new GPU instances in Azure. I highly recommend doing a POC to see benefit of these instance.
I will in this blogpost cover what is the new NVv4 instance and how to choose an instance and install and what the price is.
Enjoy /Thomas Poppelgaard
The NVv4-series virtual machines are powered by AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs and AMD EPYC 7V12(Rome) CPUs. With NVv4-series Azure is introducing virtual machines with partial GPUs. Pick the right sized virtual machine for GPU accelerated graphics applications and virtual desktops starting at 1/8th of a GPU with 2 GiB frame buffer to a full GPU with 16 GiB frame buffer. NVv4 virtual machines currently support only Windows guest operating system.
NVv4 Virtual Machines support up to 32 vCPUs, 112GB of RAM, and 16 GB of GPU memory.
With AMD hardware-based GPU virtualization solution built on top of AMD MxGPU and industry standard SR-IOV technology, customers can securely run workloads on virtual GPUs with dedicated GPU frame buffer.
- Premium Storage: Supported
- Premium Storage caching: Supported
- Live Migration: Not Supported
- Memory Preserving Updates: Not Supported
Overview which NVv4 instance type you can provisioning in Azure
| Size | vCPU | Memory: GiB | Temp storage (SSD) GiB | GPU | GPU memory: GiB | Max data disks | Max NICs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard_NV4as_v4 | 4 | 14 | 88 | 1/8 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
| Standard_NV8as_v4 | 8 | 28 | 176 | 1/4 | 4 | 8 | 4 |
| Standard_NV16as_v4 | 16 | 56 | 352 | 1/2 | 8 | 16 | 8 |
| Standard_NV32as_v4 | 32 | 112 | 704 | 1 | 16 | 32 |
1 NVv4-series VMs feature AMD Simultaneous multithreading Technology
Supported operating systems and drivers
To take advantage of the GPU capabilities of Azure NVv4-series VMs running Windows, AMD GPU drivers must be installed.
| OS | Driver |
|---|---|
| Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session – Build 2009, 2004, 1909 Windows 10 – Build 2009, 2004 1909 Windows Server 2016 (version 1607) Windows Server 2019 (version 1909) | 20.Q2 (.exe) |
Driver installation
- Connect by Remote Desktop to each NVv4-series VM.
- If you are a NVv4 preview customer then please stop the VM and wait for it to move to Stopped(Deallocated) state.
- Please start the VM and then uninstall the preview driver by running “amdcleanuputility-x64.exe” located at the folder “…\AMDCleanUninstallUtility”. The exact path will vary based on where the previous driver installation files are.
- Download and install the latest driver.
- Reboot the VM.
Verify driver installation
You can verify driver installation in Device Manager. The following example shows successful configuration of the Radeon Instinct MI25 card on an Azure NVv4 VM.
You can use dxdiag to verify the GPU display properties including the video RAM. The following example shows a 1/8th partition of the Radeon Instinct MI25 card on an Azure NVv4 VM.
GPU driver for NVv4
AMD Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 21.Q2 is available from Azure
NVv4 supports following APIs
- OpenGL 4.6
- OpenCL™ 2.0
- DirectX® 12.0
- Vulkan® 1.1
Prices for NVv4 in West Europe
| Add to estimate | Instance | Core | RAM | Temporary storage | GPU | Pay as you go with AHB | 1 year reserved with AHB (% Savings) | 3 year reserved with AHB (% Savings) | Spot with AHB (% Savings) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV4as v4 | 4 | 14 GiB | 88 GiB | 1/8th MI25 (2GB VRAM) | $0.116/hour | – – | – – | $0.0464/hour(~60%) | |
| NV8as v4 | 8 | 28 GiB | 176 GiB | 1/4th MI25 (4GB VRAM) | $0.233/hour | – – | – – | $0.0932/hour(~60%) | |
| NV16as v4 | 16 | 56 GiB | 352 GiB | 1/2 MI25 (8GB VRAM) | $0.466/hour | – – | – – | $0.1864/hour(~60%) | |
| NV32as v4 | 32 | 112 GiB | 700 GiB | 1x MI25 (16GB VRAM) | $0.932/hour | – – | – – | $0.3728/hour(~60%) |
Prices for NVv4 in US South Central
| Add to estimate | Instance | Core | RAM | Temporary storage | GPU | Pay as you go with AHB | 1 year reserved with AHB (% Savings) | 3 year reserved with AHB (% Savings) | Spot with AHB (% Savings) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV4as v4 | 4 | 14 GiB | 88 GiB | 1/8th MI25 (2GB VRAM) | $0.116/hour | – – | – – | $0.0464/hour(~60%) | |
| NV8as v4 | 8 | 28 GiB | 176 GiB | 1/4th MI25 (4GB VRAM) | $0.233/hour | – – | – – | $0.0932/hour(~60%) | |
| NV16as v4 | 16 | 56 GiB | 352 GiB | 1/2 MI25 (8GB VRAM) | $0.466/hour | – – | – – | $0.1864/hour(~60%) | |
| NV32as v4 | 32 | 112 GiB | 700 GiB | 1x MI25 (16GB VRAM) | $0.932/hour | – – | – – | $0.3728/hour(~60%) |
Source
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/nvv4-series
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-your-azure-gpu-workstations-with-flexible-gpu-partitioning/
stephan
Hey now,
I tried to install the new Standard NV8as_v4 (8 vcpus, 28 GiB memory), unfortunately even after several attempts of driver installations with the driver from
https://docs.microsoft.com/da-dk/azure/virtual-machines/windows/n-series-amd-driver-setup
the card doesn’t start. ( exclamation mark in device manager )Do you have any ideas on this?
kind regards,
stephe
Thomas Poppelgaard
Try Q2 drivers https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-pro-win-20-q1-2
Jeff
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your article!
I was checking out these machines on Azure and maybe my eyes are deceiving me, but are the prices you mentioned quadrupled since you wrote this article ? or am I seeing something wrong?
Regards,
Jeff