One of the most exciting developments recently in the Virtualization World is the emergence of mature and highly performant remote 3D Graphics solutions. As expected, Citrix and NVIDIA are leading the charge here with full support for virtualized GPUs in the XenServer hypervisor. This is revolutionizing the delivery of high end graphical computing workloads remotely that, until recently, required dedicated local hardware to perform adequately. There is a groundswell occurring in industry, and among my consulting peers, in learning the best practices and approaches. In this regard, NVIDIA has done an oustanding job of collecting and sharing the relevant information. I received the data below from John Rendek at NVIDIA yesterday and was really pleased to see what they have assembled and shared here in full- Thank You NVIDIA for “Getting It”! **UPDATE** Jared Cowart filled me in that most of this of this data was compiled by Angelo Oddo, Senior Sales Engineer at Citrix. Mad Props to Angelo!
Guides and Optimizations:
NVIDIA Resources:
VMware HDX Resources:
XenServer HDX Resources:
XenServer GPU commands:
List GPUs
lspci | grep VGA
Validate iommu is enabled
xe host-param-get uuid=<uuid_of_host> param-name=chipset-info param-key=iommu
Attach a VM to GPU
xe vm-shutdown
Find the UUID of the GPU Group
xe gpu-group-list
Attach GPU
xe vgpu-create gpu-group-uuid=<uuid_of_gpu_group> vm-uuid=< uuid_of_vm>
Validate GPU is Attached
xe vgpu-list
Start the VM
xe vm-start
Detach a GPU
First, Shut down the VM using xe vm-shutdown
Find the UUID of the vGPU attached to the VM by entering the following:
xe vgpu-list vm-uuid=<uuid_of_vm>
Detach the GPU from the VM
xe vgpu-destroy uuid=<uuid_of_vgpu>
How to implement Citrix 3D Graphics Pack
Download Citrix XenServer 6.2 + SP1
Download NVIDIA GRID vGPU Pack for GRID K1 or GRID K2
Download Citrix XenDesktop 7.1 99 user trial or licensed software here (requires a MyCitrix ID)
1) Start with a fresh XenServer 6.2 installation on GRID supported hardware
2) Install XenServer 6.2 SP1
3) Download the NVIDIA GRID vGPU Pack & install NVIDIA GRID manager in XenServer from CLI
4) Create a base Windows 7 VM
5) From XenCenter, assign a vGPU type to the base image
6) Install NVIDIA GPU guest OS driver in the base image (available in the NVIDIA GRID vGPU Pack)
7) Note: Drivers will not install if a GPU has not been assigned to the VM
8) Install the XenServer Tools
9) Install the latest version of Citrix HDX 3D Pro VDA 7.1
10) Create a Machine Catalog using MCS or PVS
11) Create a Delivery Group, assign users and publish the desktops
Tweaks for XenDesktop VDA:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Graphics]“EncodeSpeed”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Citrix\HDX3D\BitmapRemotingConfig]“HKLM_EnabledDirtyRect”=dword:00000000
Hotfixes, Drivers and Tool Downloads
