Intel Flex GPU with SR-IOV for GPU accelarated VDIs
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@jebrown Yeah I just meant in general, not specific to you. I think most businesses aren't looking for this kind of specific workload so the demand isn't very high for it.
Are you currently using Intel GPUs with Flex for this use case? Or NVidia right now and just looking to change? It might be worth considering leaving VDI, not sure if you're in the position to be able to argue that, but there are often better solutions now.
Either way, I would personally also love to see this, I just think there are other things that more companies are asking for from XCP-ng right now.
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I have not tried the flex (yet, but I can install and test it) do you have an alternative to recommend? I’m open to suggestions on that as well. I just seen the open source drivers and no additional licensing. Majority of the current set up requiring vgpu is done with nivida and VMware…… not everything we have needs gpu but the systems Using or needing the extra power from graphics are in windows and being used 24/7 and just accessed on site by thin client’s. we moved away from any type of cloud provided daas to have better reliability on critical systems and prevent down time.
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I asked about this in the Discord server a little while ago. To be honest, one of my employers would love Flex vGPU support. We've been needing to update both our general compute and engineering VDIs so we've been looking at some solutions.
While NVIDIA vGPU pricing isn't horrible, it requires us to have VMware infrastructure which is significantly more expensive (obviously). So we'd really like NVIDIA and/or Intel vGPU support, but understand that it isn't just a few lines of code that needs written and is a very small subset of XCP-ng users. Especially with the alleged uncertainty of Intel right now, it may not even be worth developing anything for their cards, but that's personal conjecture.
I've been building my own VDI solution for XO(A), but that's been stalled for a little bit due to burnout, but I plan on finishing a prototype solution and writing a setup guide in a few weeks. So if you want something for just general compute, keep an eye out!
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Generally speaking...Just because you haven't had direct requests doesn't mean the feature isn't desired.
It's easy enough to look over the current features and because it's not listed, you assume it's not there and move on to find the next viable solution.
Proxmox and OpenShift seem to be killing it in this space with Intel Flex GPU's.
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Sure, but if it's 6 months of work with 3 engineers, this means it's not "free" and you need enough resources to do it. So if people want something like this, we need to get at least some traction and a way to know how much work will be involved
edit: obviously, if it's plain SRIOV without any special work, it's another story.
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@olivierlambert From Intel's page:
"With up to 62 virtual functions based on hardware-enabled single-root input/output virtualization (SR-IOV) and no licensing fees, the Intel
Data Center GPU Flex 140 delivers impeccable quality, flexibility, and productivity at scale." -
If you are that much confident, then feel free to purchase one and use it: XCP-ng supports SRIOV but for NICs, I don't know how different it could be for a GPU, but without any hardware to test it's impossible to answer. How difficult it was to work on a more simpler hypervisor (KVM) doesn't send encouraging messages though.
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N nick.lloyd referenced this topic on
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I know this is 3 months old, but it is still relevant to my organization, and I'd have to believe others (we can't be the only one). We've been a XenServer/Citrix Hypervisor user for years. We're a Citrix/MS shop so it made sense to utilize their hypervisor. We were going to go with VMWare prior to Broadcom this year (or next), but with VMWare's licensing model we really couldn't afford their top-of-the-line edition, per core (at least there was a chance per socket) that is needed to facilitate SR-IOV for GPUs. On top of that NVidia requires licensing as well for the use of their GPUs in this way.
The Intel Flex is a great solution because there is no licensing and they allow 60+ SR-IOV sessions for their not as potent 75-watt Flex 140 card which is perfect for general applications and anything web based. Not to mention they are less expensive overall than their NVidia counterparts. Our VDI environment doesn't run anything real graphics intensive like CAD this is strictly to render web-gl based applications in a more efficient way like our own internal web map that wasn't an issue until we upgraded our ESRI version. I'd very much appreciate this feature being incorporated in if possible mainstream. In reading above I'm strictly talking about SR-IOV and not some other method of GPU sharing if that does indeed make it easier to facilitate. It would certainly improve our user experience and environment efficiencies. So a +1 from me to add the feature in one of your future releases if you are considering it.
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@jrouerdc Hi!
A good way to help would be to have access to some hardware and to understand more what's needed at Xen/toolstack level
I will ask around but if there's a chance we can get one card, it might be really helpful. -
Yes I believe that is a possibility. I make an assumption when you have completed your work the card would be returned to me? They are less expensive than others of this kind, but still have a higher price tag than a typical gaming card to the tune of 4 figures.
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Is there a shop in Europe where it could be bought?
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Mine came from Cisco as part of the new UCS Servers I purchased the C240 M7's. I know Dell sells them. I'm from the states so I'm not 100% sure they do so in Europe, meaning Dell or if they have a EU division. Lenovo has it available as well based off my reading. Since you're doing it in the name of bettering the industry you'd think that Intel or one of the hardware juggernauts would want to get one in your hands. Dare I say maybe eBay?
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I will check my contacts to see if anyone can have that card to work on it.
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Intel
Data Center GPU Flex 140That's the model?
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Yes that is correct. It's their low power 75 watt solution that allows (if I'm not mistaken) 63 SR-IOV instances per card. I acquired them as part of an end of year promotion 2 per server so I could eventually run up to 120 VDI instances per server with shared GPU. Again, we don't game, but many of our apps are internet based and especially those like maps (just viewing) and some others that have forms benefit from the GPU acceleration. Even a 5+ year old Celeron with internal graphics beats our VMs in that instance. This would level the playing field and make the user experience the same as a full desktop in all things. Thank you for considering this and assisting. I know Proxmox has it working well SR-IOV from what I've read. Hyper-V you have to fiddle with power management but it also works SR-IOV and VMWare was probably first to adopt it. The white paper/partnership between Citrix, Cisco, and Intel actually goes through how to set it up on VMware to work with VDA 2311 and higher. That may not mean much to the people reading this but I find it a little ironic that their setup/partnership with Cisco/Intel would lead to them utilizing VMWare instead of XenServer.
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If it's really only SR IOV, it might be doable without too much work (ie "only" need toolstack wiring).
But it's hard to do anything without the hardware in question. I'm taking a look on purchasing one, I found some shops in EU selling it.
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Absolutely, I completely understand what you are getting at/saying. I was just adding a little more info figuring it couldn't hurt. I appreciate you taking the time to even address and go the lengths of getting a card to test with. To be addressed by the CEO/co-founder is pretty amazing and I'm honored to even get traction. Thank you again!
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Is there any more recent card and do you know if Intel will provide such GPU in the future? I don't want to invest in another tech Intel will kill soon as they did with Optane and such
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These are them currently. There's a more powerful version the Flex 170 that's the same thing but for more graphics intensive workloads. It has less SR-IOV channels, faster GPUs, requires more power and more video RAM but its purpose, although VDI, is for your CAD type users. Same line though you can still buy them now and they are Intel's all in for VDI GPUs currently to cut away at NVidia's market. They don't offer licensing to utilize the shared GPU. It's why I made the investment. I literally got mine in our new Cisco UCS C240 M7 servers in January so they're definitely still selling/including them in server hardware. They also offer a MAX 1500 series but that's to utilze the GPU computations like crypto-mining or programs that run utilizing GPU for faster computations. They weren't designed with VDI in mind.
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Not sure if I could post a link, but here is the info on their Flex line of datacenter GPUs.
I can't comment on longevity but at least it's still their newest line in that market. I'd also add (opinion) that as budgets get tighter and they get more support from hypervisor/vendors it can only strengthen their position. I apologize for continuing to name drop, but VMWare and NVidia's licensing costs put us in a bad way. This was/is our one shot to be able to offer the same and possibly better experience at a price point we could handle. If I can't get a solution to utilize them properly I've not burned much with the incentives I received at the end of last year for our server purchase, but if I can it checks all the boxes. I would bet it may sway others to step away from the more expensive offerings as well. Looking at stock prices for VMWare and then offerings like Nutanix it would appear that it already has.
