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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
VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) info-graphic

Overview which NVv4 instance type you can provisioning in Azure

SizevCPUMemory: GiBTemp storage (SSD) GiBGPUGPU memory: GiBMax data disksMax NICs
Standard_NV4as_v4414881/8242
Standard_NV8as_v48281761/4484
Standard_NV16as_v416563521/28168
Standard_NV32as_v43211270411632

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.

OSDriver
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

  1. Connect by Remote Desktop to each NVv4-series VM.
  2. If you are a NVv4 preview customer then please stop the VM and wait for it to move to Stopped(Deallocated) state.
  3. 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.
  4. Download and install the latest driver.
  5. Reboot the VM.

Verify driver installation

GPU driver properties

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. 

GPU driver properties

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
InstanceCoreRAMTemporary 
storage
GPUPay as you go with AHB1 year reserved with 
AHB 
(% Savings)
3 year reserved with 
AHB 
(% Savings)
Spot with AHB
(% Savings)
NV4as v4414 GiB88 GiB1/8th MI25 (2GB VRAM)$0.116/hour– –– –$0.0464/hour(~60%)
NV8as v4828 GiB176 GiB1/4th MI25 (4GB VRAM)$0.233/hour– –– –$0.0932/hour(~60%)
NV16as v41656 GiB352 GiB1/2 MI25 (8GB VRAM)$0.466/hour– –– –$0.1864/hour(~60%)
NV32as v432112 GiB700 GiB1x MI25 (16GB VRAM)$0.932/hour– –– –$0.3728/hour(~60%)

Prices for NVv4 in US South Central

Add to 
estimate
InstanceCoreRAMTemporary 
storage
GPUPay as you go with AHB1 year reserved with 
AHB 
(% Savings)
3 year reserved with 
AHB 
(% Savings)
Spot with AHB
(% Savings)
NV4as v4414 GiB88 GiB1/8th MI25 (2GB VRAM)$0.116/hour– –– –$0.0464/hour(~60%)
NV8as v4828 GiB176 GiB1/4th MI25 (4GB VRAM)$0.233/hour– –– –$0.0932/hour(~60%)
NV16as v41656 GiB352 GiB1/2 MI25 (8GB VRAM)$0.466/hour– –– –$0.1864/hour(~60%)
NV32as v432112 GiB700 GiB1x 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/

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