vGPU for graphics acceleration in VMs
NVIDIA AND VMWARE ENHANCE THE VIRTUAL DESKTOP EXPERIENCE
A while back, many of you expressed interest in my:
TinkerTry.com/gpu-pass-future-test
article.
I admitted I don't have the budget or a pressing use-case to try gaming or other GPU tasks like VDI for vZilla. But other home builders may, many of whom suggested I would have had much better luck with AMD/ATI than I did with NVIDIA, as far as trying to pin the GPU to a particular VM using VMDirectPath.
So I'm curious what you think about VMware's new vGPU feature? Not sure yet?
Well, read up on it a bit first, then let us all know what you think by dropping a comment below (no login required).
Start with What’s New in vSphere 5.1? Q3 Version, Sales Overview and check out page 27 and 28:
Here's the verbeage from page 29:
vSphere 5.1 – Virtual Machine Updates Cont.
- vGPU Requirements
- Hardware
- NVIDIA Quadro 4000/5000/6000
- NVIDIA Tesla M2070Q
- View Environments Only
- View version TBD
- Targeted availability early 2013
- Windows 7 or Windows 8 VM’s Only
- Hardware Version 8 or higher
- Must have 3D enabled
- Video memory minimum: 64MB
- VIBs
- NVIDIA GPU VIB
Don't fret the VIB install, I already detailed exactly how to install those, right over here.
Here's some related conversations:
communities.vmware.com/thread/415887
communities.vmware.com/message/2113239
and:
Nvidia Quadro <3 vSphere 5.1?
<blogs.nvidia.com/2012/08/nvidia-and-vmware-enhance-the-virtual-desktop-experience>
Not exactly budget gear, for the home enthusiast. But here's one option at $629 USD after rebate:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133324
Perhaps this basic premise is promising, especially if it works, even if officially unsupported, on a variety of home-build motherboards, without the troubles that VMDirectPath has been giving us when moving from ESXi 5.0 to ESXi 5.1, detailed here. Also curious if such cards draw very few watts/stay cool, when not being actively used for anything.
Ok, so, what do you think?
