Measures reported by XenGPUOverviewTest

In VDI/virtualized server environments, the NVIDIA GRID delivers GPU resources to virtual desktops/VMs. This way, graphics can be rendered on a virtual machine's (VM’s) host server rather than on a physical endpoint device. This technology now makes it possible to use virtual desktop technology to support users accessing graphics intensive workloads. There are two modes of making GPU resources available to virtual desktops:

• Dedicated GPU or GPU Pass-through Technology: NVIDIA GPU pass-through technology lets you create a virtual workstation that gives users all the benefits of a dedicated graphics processor at their desk. By directly connecting a dedicated GPU to a virtual machine through the hypervisor, you can now allocate the full GPU and graphics memory capability to a single virtual machine without any resource compromise.

• Shared GPU or Virtual GPU (vGPU) Technology: GRID vGPU is the industry's most advanced technology for sharing true GPU hardware acceleration between multiple virtual desktops-without compromising the graphics experience. With GRID vGPU technology, the graphics commands of each virtual machine are passed directly to the GPU, without translation by the hypervisor. This allows the GPU hardware to be time-sliced to deliver improved shared virtualized graphics performance. The GRID vGPU manager allows for management of user profiles. IT managers can assign the optimal amount of graphics memory and deliver a customized graphics profile to meet the specific needs of each user. Every virtual desktop has dedicated graphics memory, just like they would at their desk, so they always have the resources they need to launch and run their applications.

In GPU-enabled VDI/Virtual server environments, administrators should plan the capacity of their environment accordingly so that the users can access the virtual machines/desktops on which graphics is rendered, without any delay. Moreover administrators should be able to capacitate their environment based on the nature of graphics that need to be accessed by the users. For example, certain users may try to access graphics intensive applications such as Autocad - in such cases, administrators may need to apply such a profile on the physical GPU of the NVIDIA GRID to provision the virtual machines/desktops that the users will not face even a minor lag in accessing the graphics resources. Based on the type of profile applied on the physical GPUs on the NVIDIA GRID, administrators should be able to capacitate their environment and be prepared to provision virtual machines/desktops to the users without any delay. To achieve this, administrators can use the XenGPUOverviewTest!

For each profile applied on the physical GPU of the NVIDIA GRID, this test helps adminsitrators to figure out the number of physical GPUs in the NVIDIA GRID and the number of vGPUs that can be provisioned from the physical GPUs. In addition, this test accurately pinpoints the number of virtual machines/desktops that can still be utilized on the NVIDIA GRID thus enabling administrators plan the capacity of their environment prior to the exhaustion of critical GPU resources!

The measures made by this test are as follows: