At Microsoft Azurecon 2015, NVIDIA announced that Microsoft will offer NVIDIA GPU-enabled professional graphics applications and accelerated computing capabilities to customers worldwide through its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.
Deploying the latest version of NVIDIA GRID™ in its new N-Series virtual machine offering, Azure is the first cloud computing platform to provide GRID 2.0 virtualized graphics for enterprise customers.
For the first time, businesses will have the ability to deploy NVIDIA Quadro® grade professional graphics applications and accelerated computing on-premises, in the cloud through Azure, or via a hybrid of the two using both Windows and Linux virtual machines. Azure will also offer customers supercomputing-class performance, with the addition of the Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform’s flagship Tesla® K80 GPU accelerators, for the most computationally demanding data center and high performance computing (HPC) applications.
Unprecedented Virtualized Graphics Performance
With NVIDIA GRID enterprises can deliver graphics intensive applications from companies such as Autodesk, ESRI and Siemens from the cloud to their users. Announced last month, NVIDIA GRID 2.0 provides the NVIDIA Quadro GPU driver support, features and performance that graphics-intensive applications require, as well as other enhancements including double the application performance of the previous generation of GRID GPUs and Linux OS support.
Supercomputing in the Cloud
The Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform is designed from the ground up for power-efficient, high performance computing (HPC), computational science, supercomputing, data analytics and deep learning applications.
Powering some of the world’s highest performance supercomputers, the Tesla platform delivers dramatically higher performance and energy efficiency than a CPU-only approach and unprecedented application throughput in the data center.
By deploying the Tesla K80 GPU accelerator in its N-Series virtual machines, Azure dramatically expands access to supercomputing-class performance, enabling enterprises worldwide to accelerate their most demanding workloads, without requiring them to invest in, build and maintain dedicated computing resources.
Azure N-series, a new family of Azure Virtual Machines
Available in preview within the next few months, the N-series will feature the NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform as well as NVIDIA GRID 2.0 technology, providing the highest-end graphics support available in the cloud today.
I am very proud to share the results of the work I did with my friend and coworker Magnar Johnsen from FirstPoint. We have been developing for a long time a smart new way of analyzing data (iOPS, CPU, Memory, GPU, Latency..) and different pieces of software was evaluated and Lakeside Software was the product we decided to go with and both our companies Poppelgaard.com and Firstpoint who are a Lakeside partner so we are legit to make assessments for clients using Lakeside Software. Below article helps you if you are about to size a NVIDIA GRID vGPU solution using either Citrix XenServer or VMware vSphere. If you have been at NVIDIA GTC, Citrix Synergy, BriForum, E2EVC or seen me talking at a Citrix User Group you might have seen the results of the work we did, thats changing on how we think applications are impacting that requires a GPU.
Magnar and I go way back.
Magnar and I have a long past with remote graphics and when we put our minds together we create something that is beautiful. Last year at Citrix Synergy audience could see how people could virtualize 3d remote graphics from Virtual Reality solution using Oculus Rift “Facebook” from the cloud. This was showed for the first time for audience and Citrix loved the idea and redesigned their exhibit about HDX 3D Pro next to FrameHawk, and sorry FrameHawk we stole all the attention with everybody wants to try the VR solution. The cool thing was VR was cool, but me and Magnar worked months “hard” to analyze the data we find at Aibel and we did very successful assessment and we shared the findings at Brian Madden BriForum in May 2014, just after Citrix Synergy, and the audience could for the first time learn the lessons we experienced and we could see applications behavior is not “just” what you might think or expect it to be. Analytics is the key to understand your app. Lets talk about why…
Lets dig into the case study we did at Aibel
Aibel is an industrial pioneer with a history dating back more than a century. With around 5,500 employees worldwide the company is a leading supplier of engineering services related to oil, gas and renewable energy.
Aibel is a huge user of desktop virtualisation technology and is currently delivering virtual desktops to around 4,500 users. The challenge was to work out what to do with the remaining 1500 CAD/CAM workstations where graphics intensive modelling of 3D designs tied them to powerful physical workstations.
With projects occurring at the eight Aibel locations in Norway as well as at the Aibel offices in Thailand and Singapore the amount of data flowing across the WAN was increasing and becoming unwieldy. Large engineering models needed to be accessed on location and shared with engineers and designers in all Aibel office locations.
Virtualisation was seen as the solution to these issues but the challenge was how to virtualise graphics intensive workloads without impacting user experience or drive uneconomic datacentre specifications.
Partner Expertise
Firstpoint AS, a trusted Citrix Gold partner and virtualisation specialists, were brought in to advise Aibel on how to best virtualise this tricky user group.
They teamed up with Thomas Poppelgaard, an independent expert in virtualisation and GPU technologies and together they started an initial survey of Aibel’s situation.
GPU Acceleration Approach
It became quickly clear that the only way to successfully virtualise the 3D graphics workstations in an economically viable fashion was to deploy GPU acceleration technology in the datacentre. NVIDIA’s GRID cards would allow dedicated and shared GPU accelerators to be placed in the datacentre to be used by virtual desktops offloading server CPUs and removing user experience impact for other virtual desktop users.
The Challenge
Having identified the technology approach the challenge now was to work out how to size the workload of these 1500 users and design a solution that would deliver user experience at least as good as their current physical desktop experience. In order to do that the team needed to work out:
What graphics applications are in use today
Who is using which applications and workstations
What GPU processor power is being consumed today by application, user and workstationPoppelgaard.com and FirstPoint brought in Lakeside Software’s SysTrack to do this job. Using SysTrack’s granular data collection model they could model a complete picture of application and GPU workload across all the users and workstations in use at Aibel today.
The Outcome
Using SysTrack the team has been able to build a complete inventory of the existing application and workstation estate and user behaviour. Using these analytics and SysTrack technologies a detailed specification and design for the future NVIDIA GRID based desktop virtualisation infrastructure has been created. Aibel is able to trust this design
as it is completely based on observed data captured from their existing estate and modelled using industry leading technologies from Lakeside and NVIDIA to create the optimal solution for Aibel’s situation. Key in any design is to not over provision the solution and thereby inflate the cost of the solution. On the other hand under provisioning will lead to a poor user experience and potential project failure. SysTrack ensures the right data is used to make the right decision for the future estate.
The assessment was primarily executed to understand Aibel engineers CAD applications such as Aveva PDMS, Bentley Microstation, etc. Shown below is a summary of average GPU usage for 1500 physical machines which revealed surprisingly that internet browsers are very GPU intensive compared to other applications.
Another benefit of leveraging SysTrack was the SysTrack MarketPlace report that had been co-authored by Lakeside and NVIDIA which allowed the team to convert all the data collected into accurate sizing of the number of NVIDIA GRID cards by model number required to offload the GPU workload.
The output from SysTrack also showed how GPUs were being used across the existing estate and how hard they were being utilised. Using jointly authored Lakeside/NVIDIA reports this data was then used to calculate estimated vGPU profiles.
Source
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
This is my first blogpost about VMware EUC product and VMware is investing alot in end user computing space and making this GPU enabled.
In release 6.1.1 VMware have enabled GPU pass-through (vDGA) to Linux virtual machines that run on following OS (Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, or NeoKylin) this technology can be used with NVIDIA GRID
This means with 1 physically NVIDIA GRID K1 you could have 4 linux VMs with GPU pass-through,k cause a K1 have 4 physically GPUs. With 1 physically NVIDIA GRID K2, you can have 2 linux VMs with GPU pass-through, cause a K2 have 2 physically GPUs
Below gives you an understand which GPU methodology I am talking about with what you can do with vDGA.
FYI – VMware View 6.1.1. supports NVIDIA GRID vGPU but only with Windows OS. KUDUS goes to TeamRGE, for using their graphics.
What’s New in This Release of VMware Horizon View 6.1.1
VMware Horizon View 6.1.1 resolves known issues in previous releases and provides the following new features and enhancements:
Client Drive Redirection
Users can share folders and drives on their local client systems with remote desktops and applications. Client Drive Redirection is supported on VDI desktops that run on single-user machines and on RDS desktops and applications. The feature is supported on Windows clients and, as a Tech Preview, on Mac OS X clients.
Horizon 6 for Linux Desktops
You can now deploy Horizon 6 desktops on Linux virtual machines. With the View Agent for Linux installer, you can set up parent virtual machines or templates that run on Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, or NeoKylin and deploy Linux-based VDI desktop pools in View Administrator. You can configure Linux virtual machines to use vDGA to support 3D graphics applications running on NVIDIA GRID GPU cards. Some features such as SSO, automated provisioning, and local device redirection are not supported in this release. For details, see Setting Up Horizon 6 for Linux Desktops guide.
Serial Port Redirection
With serial port redirection, users can redirect locally connected serial (COM) ports such as built-in RS232 ports or USB to Serial adapters. Devices such as printers, bar code readers, and other serial devices can be connected to these ports and used in the remote desktops.
Support for Windows Media Multimedia Redirection (MMR) for RDS Desktops
Windows Media MMR is now supported for videos playing on RDS desktops. In past releases, this feature was supported only on VDI desktops that run on single-user machines. For details about supported desktops, see see System Requirements for Windows Media MMR in the Setting Up Desktop and Application Pools in View guide.
HTML Access Support for Hosted Apps
Users can now connect to Hosted Apps from HTML Access Web clients. To take advantage of this feature, you must download and install a separate HTML Access installer from the Horizon 6 version 6.1.1 download page. For details, see To use HTML Access with Hosted Apps.
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
After a succesfull NVIDIA GTC (gpu technology conference) in San Jose, March 2015. It was amazing all the brain gathered in one place, at NVIDIA GTC 2015, I had so many great conversations with friends, partners and there was one sentence I thought through “try to imagine what could you do for the world if we tried to build 1 thing with all this brain power in joined forces” . NVIDIA is doing amazing things and this year it was all about “Deep Learning” and “NVIDIA GRID”. Google was part of the keynote and it was very interesting seeing how far AI is evolving, Elon Musk the guy behind Tesla, Space-X was also on stage.
NVIDIA GRID was big this year and all the vendors, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Cisco, Supermicro, Citrix, Vmware and such was there. There was tonz of success stories and best practices. So amazing to learn all the best on GPU enabled application/desktop using either Citrix or VMware, this is the conference to learn from people that are early adapters, the best of the best. If you feel missed out come next year and you understand what I mean. This conference is very different compared to other conferences. This is here it all happens, all industries meet and make a fusion across GPU’s. If you missed this year GTC, I highly recommend you go to the next year GTC which takes place in April 4-8th, 2016 in Silicon Valley
I meet for the first time the CEO and founder of NVIDIA Jen-Hsun Huang, he is a very inspiring person.
Another great friend was Fred Devoir from Textron “the man in the middle” and another great friend and fellow CTP, Dane Young.
Fred Devoir had two sessions at GTC, I highly recommend you watch them both.
If you attended and could see all the sessions or you couldn’t join GTC, now all 500 sessions are available for the public. #AMAZING, thank you NVIDIA for this.
I have in this blogpost made it easy to find all the great sessions about NVIDIA GRID
Learn the best of the best about NVIDIA GRID implementations:
Roland WartenbergDirector Global SAP Alliance, Citrix David CruickshankSr. Director, Strategy and Operations, SAP Co-Innovation Lab, SAP Labs S5377 – Running SAP 3D Visual Enterprise Using Citrix and NVIDIA – What about Performance?
Erik Bohnhorst, SR. GRID Solution Architect from NVIDIA Ronald Grass, SR. Systems Engineer from Citrix
George Thornton, VP of Engineering from Logical Front Jim Galib IT Director from Roger Williams University
Ryan Tiebout, System Operations Manager from Rogers Williams University
Aivars Apsite,Technology Strategist, Metro Health Cedric Courteix,Partner Alliance Architect, VMware Clint Pearson,IT Systems Lead, HDR Inc. John Meza,Performance Engineering Team Lead, Esri
The End User Computing Podcast (www.eucpodcast.com) is a community driven podcast for IT Professionals, and the first EUC Podcast is officially “in the bag”. Thanks to all those who hung around while the roadies tapped the mic, looked at the mic, tapped the mic again – got the manual out, realised it was in Danish written in a Manga syle, then essentially turned it off and on again.. but we got there in the end.
