Install the NVIDIA Guest Driver in a VM in vSphere with Tanzu

After you create and boot a VM in your vSphere with Tanzu environment, install the NVIDIA vGPU graphics driver in the VM to fully enable GPU operation.

Prerequisites

• Create a VM with NVIDIA vGPU device. The VM must reference the VM class that includes a vGPU definition. See Add PCI Devices to a VM Class in vSphere with Tanzu.
• Verify that you downloaded the vGPU software package from the NVIDIA download site, uncompressed the package, and have the guest drive component ready. For information, see appropriate NVIDIA Virtual GPU Software documentation.
  Note: The version of the driver component must correspond to the version of the vGPU Manager that a vSphere administrator installed on the ESXi host. See Add PCI Devices to a VM Class in vSphere with Tanzu.

Procedure

1. Copy the NVIDIA vGPU software Linux driver package, for example NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version-grid.run, to the guest VM.
2. Before attempting to run the driver installer, terminate all applications.
3. Start the NVIDIA vGPU driver installer.

   sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-version-grid.run

4. Accept the NVIDIA software license agreement and select Yes to update the X configuration settings automatically.
5. Verify that the driver has been installed.
   For example,

   ~$ nvidia-smi
   Wed May 19 22:15:04 2021
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | NVIDIA-SMI 460.63       Driver Version: 460.63       CUDA Version: 11.2     |
   |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
   | GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
   | Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
   |                               |                      |               MIG M. |
   |===============================+======================+======================|
   |   0  GRID V100-4Q        On   | 00000000:02:00.0 Off |                  N/A|
   | N/AN/AP0    N/A/  N/A|    304MiB /  4096MiB |      0%      Default |
   |                               |                      |                  N/A|
   +-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
   
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   | Processes:                                                                  |
   |  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
   |        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
   |=============================================================================|
   |  No running processes found                                                 |
   +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+