GRID: GRID 2.0 Vmware installation and testing

Infrastructure required

• System with M60 card installed. Example 1028GR-TR, 2x 2670v3, 8x 16GB DDR4, 1x Nvidia GRID M60 and 1x OS SSD and 1x VDI stor SSD

• Vmware 6.2 (required to support Linux GRID enabled workstations)

Software check list

• ESXI Hypervisor. Up to date and with SSH enabled.
• Vcenter appliance or server installation.
• VDI seat OS: Example: Windows 7 X64 Professional SP1 with Vmware tools installed, View agent, direct connection Agent and fully up to date. Linux is now also do avalible, tested with Centos 7.
• Nvidia Licensing Server. Note at date of this write up i found windows 2012 server to be unusable the licensing server software would crash consistently. Tested with windows 7 x64 pro.
• Vmware Horizon View Connection Server. Vmware software package on top windows OS. Tested: Up to date windows server 2012 R2
• Microsoft Active directory: Domain controller required. Either create my own or use bostonlabs.co.uk depending on requirement.
• Gotchas: Make sure that all IP`s are static, unique and that your Hostnames/DNS are reachable (this will most likely require logging on to the labs DNS and adding the required records). Vmware software will not be up to date directly from storage1, so update where possible.

Software labs location

Infrastructure software packages:
\\storage1\software\NVIDIA\GRID 2.0
\\storage1\iso\VMWare\VMWare 6.1\VMware 6 GA
OS software:
Deploy from PXE or get ISO from storage1

Installation guides

• Large number of steps required for installation of this platform. So here are the official guides i used:

http://pubs.vmware.com/horizon-62-view/index.jsp#com.vmware.horizon-view.gettingstarted.doc/GUID-C4C7ACB1-2283-4D6B-92CB-058DA94A4F2F.html

Look at PDF`s included with GRID 2.0 software

• Nvidia GRID licensing server link: https://nvidia.flexnetoperations.com/control/nvda/login?nextURL=%2Fcontrol%2Fnvda%2Fhome

• At time of writing the Nvidia Driver for Linux has a bug and does not work at all correctly. The Xorg.conf has missing setup info. a working example should look like:

# nvidia-xconfig:  version 352.47  (buildmeister@swio-display-x64-rhel04-12)  Fr                       i Sep 11 02:30:03 PDT 2015
Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection
Section "Files"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "CRT-0"
    Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection
Section    "ServerFlags"
     Option    "DontVTSwitch"    "true"
EndSection
Section    "Device"
    Identifier "Device0"
    Driver     "nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BusID      "PCI:2:1:0"
    Option     "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "CRT-0"
    Option     "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0, DFP-1, DFP-2, DFP-3"
    Option     "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/edid.bin; DFP-1:/etc/X11/edid.bin; DFP-2:/etc/X11/edid.bin; DFP-3:/etc/X11/edid.bin"
    Option     "ModeValidation" "NoVesaModes,NoPredefinedModes,NoXserverModes,NoMaxSizeCheck,NoMaxPClkCheck,NoEdidMaxPClkCheck,NoHorizSyncCheck,NoVertRefreshChe                       ck,AllowNonEdidModes"
EndSection

• The section "device" in the version that automatically installs during driver installation is missing most of the above including BUSID. I got my install working by editing the xorg file and adding the device section then checking the BUSID by doing lspci.