Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2, you can create, manage, and publish vGPU policies.
NVIDIA GRID vGPU is a graphics acceleration technology from NVIDIA that you can use to share a single graphics processing unit (GPU) among multiple virtual desktops. When you use NVIDIA GRID cards, installed on an x86 host, in a desktop and application virtualization solution running on vSphere 6.x and later, you can render application graphics with superior performance compared to non-hardware-accelerated environments. This capability is useful for graphics-intensive use cases such as designers in a manufacturing setting, architects, engineering labs, higher education, oil and gas exploration, clinicians in a healthcare setting, and for power users and knowledge workers who need access to rich 2D and 3D graphical interfaces.
Under Infrastructure Resources, you can view the vGPU Profiles that VMware Cloud Director loads from the vCenter Server clusters with virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU) capabilities. Each profile represents a type of vGPU. You can use a vGPU profile to create a vGPU policy that tenants can use for their virtual machines. NVIDIA vGPU profiles determine how many fixed share resources can be allocated to each VM from the total available memory.
You create and manage vGPU policies at the global or at the provider level. You can publish individual policies to one or more organization VDCs.
View and Manage vGPU Profile Information
When the hosts in a cluster backing the provider VDC resource pool have vGPU capabilities, VMware Cloud Director loads the vGPU profile information from vCenter Server. You can view, edit, and delete the vGPU profile information.
Procedure
Create a vGPU Policy
Starting with VMware Cloud Director 10.3.2, to define the placement and sizing settings of VMs that require vGPU resources, you can create vGPU policies.
Prerequisites
Verify that at least one vCenter Server host has an NVIDIA graphics device attached and all required vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs) are installed on the host.
Procedure
Add a vGPU Policy to an Organization VDC
When you create a vGPU policy, it is not visible to tenants. You can publish a vGPU policy to an organization VDC to make it available to tenants.
Prerequisites
- Verify that you have at least one organization VDC in your environment. See Create an Organization Virtual Data Center.
- Verify that you have at least one vGPU policy. See Create a vGPU Policy.
- Verify that the organization VDC to which you want to publish a vGPU policy belongs to a provider VDC scoped in the vGPU policy. Alternatively, verify that the vGPU policy you want to publish is global and does not have a provider VDC scope.
Procedure
- From the top navigation bar, select Resources and click Cloud Resources.
- In the left panel, click Organization VDCs.
- Select an organization VDC and under Policies, select the vGPU tab.
- Click Add.
- Select the vGPU policies that you want to add to the organization VDC, and click OK.
What to do next
- Select a policy and click Remove to unpublish the policy.
- Select a vGPU policy and click Set as default to make that policy appear as the default choice for the tenants during a VM and vApp creation and VM edit. If there is more than one vGPU policy published for an organization VDC, the tenant can select a different policy from the default one.
Delete a vGPU Policy
If a vGPU policy is not published to tenants, you can delete it from the provider VDC.
Prerequisites
- Verify that the vGPU policy is not added to an organization VDC. You cannot delete vGPU policies that are available to tenants.
Procedure
- From the top navigation bar, select Resources and click Cloud Resources.
- In the left panel, select Provider VDCs.
- Click a provider VDC from the list.
- Under Policies, select the vGPU tab, and select the radio button next to a vGPU policy.
- Click Delete.