Default Parameters for WVDGPUAppTest

GPU-accelerated computing is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU) together with a CPU to accelerate scientific, analytics, engineering, consumer, and enterprise applications. GPU-accelerated computing enhances application performance by offloading compute-intensive portions of the application to the GPU, while the remainder of the code still runs on the CPU.

In GPU-enabled AVD environments, if users accessing graphic virtual applications complain of slowness , administrators must be able to instantly figure out what is causing the slowness – is it because adequate GPU resources are not available to the host? Or is it because of excessive utilization of GPU memory and processing resources by a few virtual applications on the host? Accurate answers to these questions can help administrators determine whether/not:

• The host is sized with sufficient GPU resources;
• The GPUs are configured with enough graphics memory;

Measures to right-size the host and fine-tune its GPU configuration can be initiated based on the results of this analysis. This is exactly what the WVDGPUAppTest test helps administrators achieve!

To help with better utilization of resources, you can track the GPU usage rates of your instances. When you know the GPU usage rates, you can then perform tasks such as setting up managed instance groups that can be used to autoscale resources based on needs.

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the WVDGPUAppTest test.

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• This test uses NVIDIA WMI (NVWMI) to pull metrics on GPU usage by applications. For this test to run therefore, you need to install NVWMI on the target Azure Virtual Desktop. If the NVWMI is installed in its default directory, then this test will automatically discover the location of NVWMI and use it for pulling the desired metrics. This is why, the NVIDIA Home parameter is set to none by default. However, if you have installed NVWMI in a different directory, then you have to explicitly configure the path to that installation directory against the NVIDIA Home parameter.

• By default, the REPORT BY DOMAIN NAME flag is set to Yes. This implies that by default, the detailed diagnosis of this test will display the domainname\username of each user who accessed an application on the AVD. This way, administrators will be able to quickly determine which user logged into the AVD from which domain. If you want the detailed diagnosis to display only the user name of these users, set this flag to No.

• The DD FREQUENCY parameter refers to the frequency with which detailed diagnosis measures are to be generated for this test. The default is 1:1. This indicates that, by default, detailed measures will be generated every time this test runs, and also every time the test detects a problem. You can modify this frequency, if you so desire. Also, if you intend to disable the detailed diagnosis capability for this test, you can do so by specifying none against DD FREQUENCY .

• Once the above values are provided, click on the UPDATE button to register the changes made.

When changing default configurations of tests, the values with “$” indicate variables that will be replaced by the eG system according to the specific server being managed - for instance, $hostName is the host/nickname of the target host, $port is the port number of the server being monitored. E.g., for a server xyz:80, $hostName will be changed automatically by the eG manager to “xyz*” and $port will be changed to “80” when configuring a test.