3D Graphics Rendering for Manual Farms

Linux multi-session hosts support the NVIDIA GRID vGPU (shared GPU hardware acceleration) for the rendering of 3D graphics. With this feature, a physical GPU on an ESXi host is shared among multiple virtual machines.

How the ESXi Host Assigns Virtual Machines to Physical GPUs

With NVIDIA GRID vGPU, each graphics card can support multiple multi-session hosts or virtual machines. If an ESXi host has multiple physical GPUs, you can also configure the way the ESXi host assigns virtual machines to the GPUs. By default, the ESXi host assigns virtual machines to the physical GPU with the fewest virtual machines already assigned. This is called performance mode.

You can also choose consolidation mode, where the ESXi host assigns virtual machines to the same physical GPU until the maximum number of virtual machines is reached before placing virtual machines on the next physical GPU. To configure consolidation mode, edit the config file on the ESXi host and add the following entry:

vGPU.consolidation = "true"

Overview of Steps for Configuring 3D Graphics

This overview describes tasks that you must perform to configure 3D graphics. For more information about setting up NVIDIA GRID vGPU, see the NVIDIA vGPU Deployment Guide for Horizon.

1. Set up a multi-session host virtual machine. See Setting Up Multi-Session Linux Desktop and Application Pools.
2. Add the graphics PCI device to the virtual machine. See "Other Virtual Machine Device Configuration" in the chapter "Configuring Virtual machine Hardware" in the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration document. Be sure to click Reserve all memory when adding the device.
3. On the virtual machine, install the device driver for the graphics card. See Setting Up Graphics for Linux Desktops.
4. Add the multi-session host to a manual farm, create a published desktop pool, connect to the desktop, and activate the display adapter.