Lately we see a lot of customers adding GPU cards to their ESXi hosts to support GPU-accelerated VDI’s. In this blog I will explain how the GPU enabled cluster is added to a VMware Horizon DaaS environment.

Adding additional Desktop Manager for GPU enabled cluster

Because we can only assign 1 capacity definition to 1 Desktop Manager (pair) we will need to create a second pair of Desktop Managers. After the creation we will be able to assign the GPU enable capacity to the newly created Desktop Mangers.

• Go to VMware Horizon DaaS Service Center
• Go to Tenants, browse tenants
• Click edit behind the tenant where the Desktop Manager will be added

• Select Appliances and click add appliances
• Fill in the Additional Appliance Config

• Click Create Appliances

Assign GPU enabled Resources to the Desktop Manager

After the creation of the Desktop Manager we will need to assign the GPU enabled Compute Resources to the Desktop Manager.

• Go to VMware Horizon DaaS Service Center.
• Service Grid, Resources.
• Desktop Mangers and select the newly created Desktop Manager
• Select the tab Compute Resources

• Select the correct available Compute Resources and click assign
• Choose the correct Compute Resources

• Select Tenant and click save (GPU profile is visable)

• Go to Neworks and select the correct network and click assign

Creating GPU Desktop capacity

In order to enable the CPU Desktop capacity we will need to create a capacity definition with vGPU memory profile.

• Go to VMware Horizon DaaS Service Center
• Go to Configuration, Standard Capacity

• Click on the + sign behind Standard Capacity.Create the Capacity Definition. Remember that the vGPU memory corresponds with the GPU profile that is being used

• Click on the + sign behind Desktop Models
• Create one or multiple Desktop Models. vCPU, vRAM and vGPU will be multiplied by the chosen multiplier

Adding GPU Desktop capacity to Desktop Manager

Now we need to add the capacity to the tenant environment.

• Go to VMware Horizon DaaS Service Center
• Go to Tenants, browse tenants
• Click edit behind the tenant where the Desktop Manager needs to be added

• Go to quotas
• Select the Data Center and select the GPU enabled Desktop Manager
• Select the correct Desktop Capacity

• Add Desktop Capacity Units and click update

Supported GPU Cards

Currently the following GPU Cards and profiles are supported.

• NVIDIA Grid K1
• NVIDIA Grid M60
• NVIDIA Grid M10

Supported GPU Profiles

Currently only the Q-profile for the above mentioned cards are supported.

Additional GPU Cards and Profiles

If support is needed for different cards than mentioned above please contact VMware support to see what is possible.

I hope this blog helps you in adding GPU enabled resources to the Horizon DaaS platform. If there are any questions please let me know and leave a comment.