Microsoft Azure – NVadsA10 v5-series

Microsoft have released a new instance powered by NVIDIA A10 GPUs and AMD EPYC 74F3V(Milan) CPU with a base frequency of 3.2 Ghz, all cores peak frequency of 4.0Ghz.  With NVadsA10v5-series Azure is introducing virtual machines with partial NVIDIA GPUs. Pick the right sized virtual machine for GPU accelerated graphics applications and virtual desktops starting at 1/6th of a GPU with 4-GiB frame buffer to a full A10 GPU with 24-GiB frame buffer.

The preview is currenty availabe in Azure – US South Central and Azure – West Europe regions.

Prices are now GA (21th March 2022) for North Europe, US East 2, US West3

Sign up for preview to get early access to the NVadsA10v5-series.

NVIDIA Ampere GPU (A10) is supporting GPU-P (SR-IOV) which is why its a big step for partitioning the GPU and making the price dramatically cheaper in Azure. *note there have not been released any prices yet of the instances (its unknown) 

Blogpost last updated: 21th March 2022

Continue reading

NVIDIA vGPU 14

It’s time to plan updating your NVIDIA Enterprise GPUs. NVIDIA vGPU Software 14 is now GA since February 2022.

NVIDIA vGPU software includes vWS, vCS, vPC, and vApps.

If you got any of following NVIDIA GPU’s: A100, A40, A30, A16, A10, A2, RTX A6000, RTX A5000, RTX8000, RTX6000, V100, T4, P100, P40, P6, P4, M60, M10, M6  If you are interested in a quick overview of which NVIDIA enterprise GPU is supporting which hypervisor, Guest os and remoting technology, I highly recommend you check out this link from NVIDIA that provides the NVIDIA vGPU software product support matrix. NVIDIA vGPU software 14 is supported until February 2023. NVIDIA vGPU software 14 is a Product Branch Support. I this article, I am also covering which Public Cloud instance is available with NVIDIA GPUs and which license is BYO or provided by the public cloud provider such as Azure, AWS, GCP, Alibaba. For a list of validated server platforms, refer to NVIDIA vGPU Certified Servers. Important note for EUC (Citrix/VMware customers):
  • NVIDIA vGPU 14.0 is supported with VMware Horizon 2111 (8.4), 2106 (8.3), 2013 (8.2), 2012 (8.1), 2006 (8.0), 7.13, 7.12, 7.11, 7.10, 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0
  • NVIDIA vGPU 14.0 is only supported with Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops (LTSR) 7 1912, 7.15 (CR)  7 2112, 7 2109, 7 2106, 7 2103, 7 2012, 7 2009, 7 2003, 7 1909, 7 1906, 7 1903
This release includes the following software:
  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager version 510.47.03 for following hypervisors. (Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, RHEL KVM)
  • NVIDIA Windows driver version 511.65
  • NVIDIA Linux driver version 510.47.03

New Features in Release 14.0

  • Support for GPUDirect® technology on all C-series vGPUs on GPUs that support SR-IOV
  • Support for a mixture of time-sliced vGPUs of the same frame buffer size on the same GPU
  • Support for Tesla Compute Cluster (TCC) mode for Q-series vGPUs on Windows guest VMs
  • Support for GPU System Processor (GSP) in GPU pass through and bare-metal configurations on Linux with vCS
    Note: If you are using a product other than vCS, you must disable GSP as explained in Virtual GPU Software User Guide.
  • Enhanced NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit support:
    • NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit profilers can be enabled when unified memory is enabled.
    • Nsight Systems GPU context switch trace is supported.
  • Enhancements to the NVIDIA Management Library (NVML) to determine whether a vGPU type supports GPUDirect technology and peer-to-peer CUDA transfers over NVLink
  • Addition of RPM and Debian packages for the NVIDIA vGPU software graphics drivers for Linux
  • Security updates – see Security Bulletin: NVIDIA GPU Display Driver – February 2022, which is posted shortly after the release date of this software and is listed on the NVIDIA Product Security pages
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

Hardware and Software Support Introduced in Release 14.0

  • Support for the following GPUs:
    • NVIDIA A2
    • NVIDIA A30X
    • NVIDIA A100X
  • Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM hypervisor 8.5
  • Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.5 as a guest OS
  • Support for Debian 10 as a guest OS
  • Support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops version 7 2112
  • Support for VMware Horizon 2111 (8.4)

Feature Support Withdrawn in Release 14.0

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM hypervisor 8.1, 7.8, and 7.7 are no longer supported.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 is no longer supported as a guest OS.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.8 and 7.7 are no longer supported as a guest OS.
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 is no longer supported as a guest OS.

Features Deprecated in Release 14.0

The following table lists features that are deprecated in this release of NVIDIA vGPU software. Although the features remain available in this release, they might be withdrawn in a future release. In preparation for the possible removal of these features, use the preferred alternative listed in the table.

Deprecated Feature Preferred Alternative Additional Information
Legacy NVIDIA vGPU software license server NVIDIA License System NVIDIA Virtual GPU Software License Server End of Life Notice

Continue reading

NVIDIA vGPU 13

It’s time to plan updating your NVIDIA Enterprise GPUs. NVIDIA vGPU Software 13 is now GA since August 2021.

NVIDIA vGPU software includes vWS, vCS, vPC, and vApps.

If you got any of followin NVIDIA GPU’s: A10, A16, A30, A40, A100, M6, M10, M60, P4, P6, P40, P100, V100, T4, RTX A5000, RTX A6000, RTX6000, RTX8000 If you are interested in a quick overview of which NVIDIA enterprise GPU is supporting which hypervisor, Guest os and remoting technology, I highly recommend you check out this link from NVIDIA that provides the NVIDIA vGPU software product support matrix. NVIDIA vGPU software 13 is supported until August 2024. NVIDIA vGPU software 13 is a Long-Termin Support Branch.

I this article, I am also covering which Public Cloud instance is available with NVIDIA GPUs and which license is BYO or provided by the public cloud provider such as Azure, AWS, GCP, Alibaba.

For a list of validated server platforms, refer to NVIDIA vGPU Certified Servers.

Important note for EUC (Citrix/VMware customers):

  • NVIDIA vGPU 13.0 is supported with VMware Horizon 2106 (8.3), 2013 (8.2), 2012 (8.1), 2006 (8.0), 7.13, 7.12, 7.11, 7.10, 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0
  • NVIDIA vGPU 13.0 is only supported with Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops (LTSR) 7 1912, 7.15 (CR)  7 2012, 2103, 2106, 2012, 2009, 2006, 2003, 1909, 1906, 1903

This release includes the following software:

  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager version 470.63 for following hypervisors. (Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, RHEL KVM)
  • NVIDIA Windows driver version 471.68
  • NVIDIA Linux driver version 470.63.01

New Features in Release 13.0

  • Support for the following NVIDIA CUDA Toolkitfeatures on NVIDIA vGPU:
    • Development tools such as IDEs, debuggers, profilers, and utilities as listed under CUDA Toolkit Major Components in NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit Release Notes for CUDA 11.4
    • Tracing and profiling through the CUDA Profiling Tools Interface (CUPTI)
  • Compatibility with the guest VM drivers from the previous long-term support branch (11)
  • Single-slice GPU instances with decoder support
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

Hardware and Software Support Introduced in Release 13.0

  • Support for the following GPUs:
    • NVIDIA A100 PCIe 80GB
    • NVIDIA A30
    • NVIDIA A16
  • Support for Windows Server 2022 with Hyper-V role
  • Support for Windows Server 2022 as a guest OS
  • Support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops version 7 2106
  • Support for VMware Horizon 2106 (8.3)

Feature Support Withdrawn in Release 13.0

  • The following GPUs are no longer supported on VMware vSphere:
    • NVIDIA A100 HGX 80GB
    • NVIDIA A100 PCIe 40GB
    • NVIDIA A100 HGX 40GB
    Instead, these GPUs are supported on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
  • NVIDIA Virtual Compute Server (vCS) is no longer supported on VMware vSphere and C-series vGPU types are no longer available. Instead, vCS is supported on VMware vSphere with NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
  • The base VMware vSphere 7.0 release and VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 1 are no longer supported.

Continue reading

NVIDIA vGPU Software 12

It’s time to plan updating your NVIDIA Enterprise GPUs. NVIDIA vGPU Software 12 is now GA.

NVIDIA vGPU software includes vWS, vCS, vPC, and vApps.

If you got any of followin NVIDIA GPU’s: M6, M10, M60, P4, P6, P40, P100, V100, T4, RTX6000, RTX8000, A100, A40, RTXA6000.

If you are interested in a quick overview of which NVIDIA enterprise GPU is supporting which hypervisor, Guest os and remoting technology, I highly recommend you check out this link from NVIDIA that provides the NVIDIA vGPU software product support matrix.

NVIDIA vGPU software 12 is supported until January 2022.

NVIDIA vGPU software 12 is a new-feature branch support. If you are looking for Long-Term support branch latest release is 11.x or 8.x

I this article, I am also covering which Public Cloud instance is available with NVIDIA GPUs and which license is BYO or provided by the public cloud provider such as Azure, AWS, GCP, Alibaba.

For a list of validated server platforms, refer to NVIDIA vGPU Certified Servers.

Important note for EUC (Citrix/VMware customers):

  • NVIDIA vGPU 12.0 is supported with VMware Horizon 2006 (8.0), 7.13, 7.12, 7.11, 7.10, 7.9, 7.8, 7.7, 7.6, 7.5, 7.4, 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0
  • NVIDIA vGPU 12.0 is only supported with Citrix Virtual Apps & Desktops (LTSR) 7.15, 7 1912, (CR) 7 2006, 7 2012

This release includes the following software:

  • NVIDIA vGPU Manager version 460.32.04 for following hypervisors. (Citrix Hypervisor, VMware vSphere, RHEL KVM)
  • NVIDIA Windows driver version 461.09
  • NVIDIA Linux driver version 460.32.03

New Features in Release 12.0

  • Support for NVIDIA® GPU Operator
  • Support for NVIDIA®NVSwitch™ on-chip memory fabric
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

Hardware and Software Support Introduced in Release 12.0

  • Support for the following GPUs:
    • NVIDIA A100 HGX 80GB
    • NVIDIA A40
    • NVIDIA RTX A6000
  • Support for Windows 10 October 2020 Update (20H2) as a guest OS
  • Support for Red Hat CoreOS 4.7 as a guest OS
  • Support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2

Continue reading