HPE Moonshot have been around for some time now, and I have been very lucky working together with HPE and testing their server cartridges that are compatible with Citrix solutions. Last year, at HPE Discover in London, I wrote an article about how Citrix internally are using HPE moonshot and which server cartridges were available at that time and how financial customers are benefiting from these solutions.
Earlier this year I have seen several customers having issues with AutoCAD in Citrix not defaulting to the primary display adapter, so the GPU wouldn be fully functioning and Autodesk AutoCAD 2016/2017 would turn off hardware acceleration. This issue have been seen on NVIDIA Gpus such as GRID, NVIDIA also have a official KB on this http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4092/ and issue is also seen with INTEL gpu such as Iris Pro Graphics more specific on solutions with HPE Moonshot 710p and 710x.
Issue is identified on both Citrix XenApp 7.x (Windows Server OSs) and Citrix XenDesktop 7.x (Workstation OSs)
“The primary display adapter is not shown as the default in a Citrix environment.”
I am happy to share that Autodesk have finally fixed this “bug” with Citrix and now the GPUs will work correctly with Autodesk AutoCAD 2016 and Autodesk AutoCAD 2017 when you apply below hot fix for the product you have.
This hotfix for citrix applies to the following releases with the AutoCAD 2016 Service Pack 1 already installed:
this hotfix for citrix applies to the following release:
Apply this Service Pack to the following Autodesk products running on all supported operating systems and languages. Be sure to install the correct Service Pack.
This Service Pack can be applied to AutoCAD 2017 installed as a standalone application, AutoCAD-based Vertical products, and the Autodesk Design Suites listed below.
AutoCAD and Verticals Products:
Autodesk Design Suites:
Display
Open and Save
PDF Import
Xref
General
Download the Autodesk AutoCAD 2017 Service Pack 1 here
Download Accumulated hotfix 4 for AutoCAD 2016 based products here
Hi All
Its time to update your NVIDIA GRID K1, K2, M6, M60 environment.
NVIDIA have released new drivers that supports Windows 10 + fix several bugs.
If you want to test Server 2016 then the new Windows 10 drivers works, I have just tried and they work but they are not “certified” so test this with your own risk, please. Always test this in a test environment and this is not for production environments, unless you want to be early innovators 😉
#HINT – Windows 10 is not supported on Citrix XenServer 6.2 only on Citrix XenServer 6.5.
## HINT – Linux drivers are only available with Tesla M6, M60.
NVIDIA have released a new version of vGPU 352.83-354.80 for NVIDIA GRID 1.0 (K1, K2) GRID 2.0 Tesla M6 and Tesla M60 platform.
Included in this release is
Important:
The GRID vGPU Manager and Windows guest VM drivers must be installed together. Older VM drivers will not function correctly with this release of GRID vGPU Manager. Similarly, older GRID vGPU Managers will not function correctly with this release of Windows guest drivers
If you have a NVIDIA GRID K1, K2 vGPU GRID manager installed in Citrix XenServer. Upgrade with below methodology:
Upgrading an existing installation of the NVIDIA driver on Citrix XenServer 6.2, use the rpm -U command to upgrade:
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.2-352.83.i386.rpm Preparing packages for installation...
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.2-352.83.i386.rpm Preparing packages for installation...
The recommendation from NVIDIA is to shutdown all VMs using a GPU. The machine does continue to work during the update, but since you need to reboot the XenServer itself, it’s better to gracefully shutdown the VMs. So after your VMs have been shutdown and you upgraded the NVIDIA driver, you can reboot your host.
[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable [root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot
run lsmod | grep nvidia
Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:
Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.
If you have a NVIDIA GRID K1, K2, M6, M60 vGPU GRID manager installed in Citrix XenServer. Upgrade with one of below methodology:
Upgrading an existing installation of the NVIDIA driver on Citrix XenServer 6.5, use the rpm -U command to upgrade:
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64.rpm Preparing packages for installation...
[root@localhost ~]# rpm -Uv NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64.rpm Preparing packages for installation...
The recommendation from NVIDIA is to shutdown all VMs using a GPU. The machine does continue to work during the update, but since you need to reboot the XenServer itself, it’s better to gracefully shutdown the VMs. So after your VMs have been shutdown and you upgraded the NVIDIA driver, you can reboot your host.
[root@localhost ~]# xe host-disable [root@localhost ~]# xe host-reboot
Select Install Update… from the Tools menu
Click Next after going through the instructions on the Before You Start section
Click Add on the Select Update section and open NVIDIA’s XenServer Supplemental Pack ISO
“NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64-supplemental-pack.tar.bz2 ”
“NVIDIA-vGPU-xenserver-6.5-352.83.x86_64-supplemental-pack.tar.bz2 ”
Click Next on the Select Update section
In the Select Servers section select all the XenServer hosts on which the Supplemental Pack should be installed on and click Next
Click Next on the Upload section once the Supplemental Pack has been uploaded to all the XenServer hosts
Getting Started
Click Next on the Prechecks section
Click Install Update on the Update Mode section
Click Finish on the Install Update section
After the XenServer platform has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.
run lsmod | grep nvidia
Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:
Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.
To update the NVIDIA GPU VIB, you must uninstall the currently installed VIB and install the new VIB.
To uninstall the currently installed VIB:
xorg service by running the command:/etc/init.d/xorg stopvmkload_mod -u nvidiaesxcli software vib remove -n nameofNVIDIAVIBYou can now install a new NVIDIA GPU VIB[root@lesxi ~] esxcli software vib install -v /NVIDIA-vGPU-kepler-VMware_ESXi_6.0_Host_Driver_352.83-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585.vib
[root@lesxi ~] esxcli software vib install -v /NVIDIA-vGPU-VMware_ESXi_6.0_Host_Driver_352.83-1OEM.600.0.0.2494585.vib
After the ESXi host has rebooted, verify that the GRID package installed and loaded correctly by checking for the NVIDIA kernel driver in the list of kernel loaded modules.
[root@lesxi ~]# vmkload_mod -l | grep nvidia Preparing packages for installation...
run nvidia-smi
Verify that the NVIDIA kernel driver can successfully communicate with the GRID physical GPUs in your system by running the nvidia-smi command, which should produce a listing of the GPUs in your platform:
Check driver version is 352.83, if it is then your host is ready for GPU awesomeness and make your VM rock.
When the hypervisor vGPU GRID manager is updated next is updating the Virtual Machines vGPU.
Update your Golden Images and reprovisioning the new virtual machines with updated vGPU drivers, if you have stateless machines update vGPU drivers on each.
#HINT – Express upgrade of drivers is the recommended option according to the setup. If you use the “Custom” option, you will have the option to do a “clean” installation. The downside of the “clean installation” is that it will remove all profiles and custom settings. The pro of using the clean installation option is that it will reinstall the complete driver, meaning that there will be no old driver files left on the system. I most of the time recommends using a “Clean” installation to keep it vanilla 🙂
#1 Linux driver is not available with Citrix XenServer 6.2 or 6.5 and ESX for K1/K2. This is only available with GRID vGPU for M60
GRID vGPU with Linux guest VMs is supported on Tesla M60 and M6, with the following distributions:
Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.2 for GRID K1 / K2 her
Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.5 for GRID K1 / K2 her
Download vGPU 352.83-354.80 for vSphere 6 for GRID K1 / K2 here
vGPU Grid Manager + Drivers are only available to customers and NVIDIA NPN partners.
Download if you are a NPN partner
Download if you are a GRID 2.0 customer
vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.2 for Tesla M6 / M60
vGPU 352.83-354.80 for XenServer 6.5 for Tesla M6 / M60
vGPU 352.83-354.80 for vSphere 6 for Tesla M6 / M60
For more information about the update from NVIDIA GRID – vGPU 352.83-354.80 contact me.
Citrix technology professional – CTP, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional MVP, Thomas Poppelgaard provides professional services. Write to me on my email thomas@poppelgaard.com or call on my cell +45 53540356
Hi all, if you are looking for an event that is all about CAD, CAM, CAE, PLM, Rendering, 3D technologies, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and 3D printing then is FREE!! then DEVELOP3D LIVE is the event to join. Rachel Berry opened my eyes going there last year 2015 and she made me come all the way from Denmark to Warwick and it was worth the long trip 🙂 If you are looking for travel advice Hotels and such I recommend you read Rachel Berry blogpost, I use myself Kayak.com 🙂 that always saves my life when i am traveling around the world and if you want it cheap use Airbnb.com.
I went there and had high expectations and I was in for a surprise. It was all about above and much more I saw for the first time Carl Bass the CEO of Autodesk, Gian Paolo Bassi the CEO of SolidWorks, Jon Hirschtick the CEO of Onshore and the founder of SolidWorks, Nikola Bozinovic the Founder and CEO of FRAME, and many many more.
I got my hands on the HP Zvr for the second time, I saw the unit for the first time at NVIDIA GTC in 2013 and HP have acquired the company. I also saw another favorite Augmented Device the HP Sprout, which is an amazing unit. 3Dconnexion was off course also there so all my favorite CAD peripherals and next gen tools.
Below is the picture of Carl Bass CEO of Autodesk talking at DEVELOP3D LIVE last year and Rachel Berry trying Fra.me solution
I am looking very much forward meeting a good friend of mine Adam Jull from IMSCAD Global.
Adam and his team have been early adapters of HDX 3D Pro like myself, so its great to see a pioneer talking at Develop3DLive.
I am also looking very much forward meeting the NVIDIA team + my favorite CAD genius Rachel Berry and also see if AMD have something interesting to show like the Multiuser gpu if its ready for that time.
Get your ticket for free here for joining the awesome CAD event in beautiful Warwick. If you never been to UK well this is your reason to go, learn from the best and brightest people on CAD and see the beautiful country side of England. Two awesome things.
Citrix have released a new version of Citrix XenDesktop 7.7 and XenApp 7.7
My first impressions of this release is, this is the release you should update to if you are running Citrix XenDesktop 7.x, the speed improvements in the GUI is incredible, its snappy realiable and makes you work without waiting it for loading when you click around the catalogs and the delivery groups. The 7.7 release is an important release from Citrix where Citrix is now fully supporting Microsoft Azure, so you can provisioning VDI or XenApp machines on Microsoft Azure with MCS technology. Another long waited feature is “Zones” this feature will be loved by customers that have branch offices where there is a requirement to install local Citrix infrastructure components such as Studio, Director, Site database, Zones was very common used in IMA architecture and now its finally implemented in FMA, great job Citrix. These are just some of the all the new huge improvements and this is the best release of XenApp/XenDesktop. Other new product release that is included in the XenDesktop/XenApp 7.7 media is HDX RealTime Optimization Pack 2.0, License Server 11.13.1, Profile Management 5.4, Citrix Provisioning 7.7, Citrix Receiver 4.4 is not in the iso, but you have to download this seperated, which i highly recommends.
What a great year to finish with and happy updating and I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Citrix XenDesktop 7.7 & Citrix XenDesktop 7.7 contains following software updates and new features and enhancements, this blog post covers all whats new in the architecture and components. Citrix Provisioning 7.7 is covered in a seperated article here.
This product release includes the following new and enhanced features.
Deployments that span widely-dispersed locations connected by a WAN can face challenges due to network latency and reliability. Configuring zones can help users in remote regions connect to local resources without forcing connections to traverse large segments of the WAN. Using zones allows effective Site management from a single Citrix Studio console, Citrix Director, and the Site database. This saves the costs of deploying, staffing, licensing, and maintaining additional Sites containing separate databases in remote locations.
Zones can be helpful in deployments of all sizes. You can use zones to keep applications and desktops closer to end users, which improves performance.
For more information, see the Zones article.
When you configure the databases during Site creation, you can now specify separate locations for the Site, Logging, and Monitoring databases. Later, you can specify different locations for all three databases. In previous releases, all three databases were created at the same address, and you could not specify a different address for the Site database later.
You can now add more Delivery Controllers when you create a Site, as well as later. In previous releases, you could add more Controllers only after you created the Site.
For more information, see the Databases and Controllers articles.
Configure application limits to help manage application use. For example, you can use application limits to manage the number of users accessing an application simultaneously. Similarly, application limits can be used to manage the number of simultaneous instances of resource-intensive applications, this can help maintain server performance and prevent deterioration in service.
For more information, see the Manage applications article.
You can now choose to repeat a notification message that is sent to affected machines before the following types of actions begin:
Updating machines in a Machine Catalog using a new master image
Restarting machines in a Delivery Group according to a configured schedule
If you indicate that the first message should be sent to each affected machine 15 minutes before the update or restart begins, you can also specify that the message be repeated every five minutes until the update/restart begins.
For more information, see the Manage Machine Catalogs and Manage machines in Delivery Groups articles.
By default, sessions roam between client devices with the user. When the user launches a session and then moves to another device, the same session is used and applications are available on both devices. The applications follow, regardless of the device or whether current sessions exist. Similarly, printers and other resources assigned to the application follow.
You can now use the PowerShell SDK to tailor session roaming. This was an experimental feature in the previous release.
For more information, see the Sessions article.
When using the PowerShell SDK to create or update a Machine Catalog, you can now select a template from other hypervisor connections. This is in addition to the currently-available choices of VM images and snapshots.
See the System requirements article for full support information. Information about support for third-party product versions is updated periodically.
By default, SQL Server 2012 Express SP2 is installed when you install the Delivery Controller. SP1 is no longer installed.
The component installers now automatically deploy 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 runtimes, as well as 2008 and 2010 runtimes. Visual C++ 2005 is no longer deployed.
You can install Studio or VDAs for Windows Desktop OS on machines running Windows 10.
You can create connections to Microsoft Azure virtualization resources.
The product ISO no longer includes versions of the Citrix Receiver for Mac and the Citrix Receiver for Linux. You (or your users) can download and install the Citrix Receivers from the Citrix website. Alternatively, you can make those Citrix Receivers available from your StoreFront server (see the Make Citrix Receiver installation files available on the server section in the StoreFront 3.0.x documentation, or the equivalent documentation for the StoreFront version you are using).
The Citrix Director version provided with this release contains the following new and enhanced features:
You can now configure proactive alerting and notifications when thresholds are reached. This enables quicker responses even when you are not viewing the monitoring console.
For more information, see Alerts and notifications.
Deployments that use Microsoft System Center 2012 – Operations Manager to monitor deployments can now view alerts provided by the Operations Manager on the Dashboard and in other high level views in Citrix Director. For example, if connections to supported hypervisors fail, the administrator can check Citrix Director for Operations Manager alerts. After reviewing alert details in Citrix Director, the administrator can then switch to the Operations Manager console for additional troubleshooting, if needed.
For more information, see SCOM alerts.
Citrix Director now supports Integrated Windows Authentication. For single sign-on, a user’s Windows credentials are automatically used to access Citrix Director. This support allows users to log on to their machines using any credential provider and supporting hardware, and use that logged-on identity to access Citrix Director.
For more information, see Use Citrix Director with Integrated Windows Authentication.
The Trends view now shows the usage of Desktop OS by Site and by Delivery group, and it shows the usage of Server OS by site, by Delivery group, and by Machine. This gives you a real-time view of your OS usage, enabling you to quickly assess your site’s capacity needs.
For more information, see Monitor historical trends across a Site.
Application limits configured in Studio are shown in existing views and counts in Citrix Director. For example, the User Connection Failures on the Dashboard will indicate when a connection attempt fails because it would exceed an application limit.
For more information, see Application limits.
Citrix Licensing Manager – Enables downloading and allocation of license files from the License Server on which the Citrix Licensing Manager is installed. You can specify a date range for the historical usage and export it to a CSV file. The CSV file provides daily usage information including the number of licenses in overdraft. License Server VPX does not support the Citrix Licensing Manager.
When upgrading Profile management, the installer removes the old version along with the WMI Provider, and then installs the new version. If you perform the upgrade after separating the two components, the WMI Provider is not upgraded. In this case, install it separately to ensure the two components remain compatible with each other and your VDAs. You must provide the standalone WMI MSI file or installer for Versions 7.5 and 7.6 of the VDA so that the correct version of the WMI Provider installs after upgrading Profile management.
If you upgrade to Profile management 5.4 on a VDA earlier than version 7.7, use profilemgt_x64/x86.msi to do so. If you upgrade on a Version 7.7 VDA, Profile management 5.4 and WMI Provider 5.4 are automatically installed (by profilemgt_x64/x86.msi and UpmVDAPlugin_x64/x86.msi).
Download Citrix XenDesktop 7.7 here (Require MyCitrix ID)
Download Citrix XenApp 7.7 here (Require MyCitrix ID)
Download Citrix Profile Management 5.4 here
Download Citrix HDX Optimization Pack 2.0 here
Download Citrix License Server 11.13.1 here (For Windows or VPX appliance)
