vGPU and Blast Extreme vs PCoIP

[ITVisionIT]

Hello,

We have been running Horizon View 6 with vGPU enable (K1 and K2 cards) to support our CAD/Engineering team and we continue to get complaints that the 3D/Graphic performance isn't up to par.

We have tried various GPO settings to see if we can get the performance out of these VMs utilizing the PCoIP protocol..  We have plenty of resources for the VMs to access, however the users who are connecting are on a 6MB MPLS network. VMs are configured with K160 and K260 profiles.

In efforts to see if I could improve performance, I setup View 7 with the Blast Extreme protocol to see that would help vs. PCoIP.  A couple of the users informed it was about the same for graphic performance, but they noticed an improvement in file open times (not sure about that).

I keep coming across YouTube videos of 4K videos being played over Blast Extreme but to me that is not a big deal.  My engineers need to navigate, rotate, walkthrough various 3D models.  Are there "optimal" GPO setting for Blast Extreme Protocol I need to be adjusting based on the bandwidth available to the users?  The site where the VMs are hosted at have a 100MB MPLS connection.  I am wondering too if their is something inside the NVIDIA Control Panel for the driver that needs some tweeking as well.

Also, I was under the impress that the Blast Extreme protocol went over the 443 port and not 8443.  Is this true?

Greatly appreciate any direction, suggestion and support.

Thank You

[AlexeyKhudyakov]

Hi,

I had the same complaints from CAD Engineering team. And the problem was not in the vGPU...

As a test, I changed the amount of CPU cores from four to two. And then I set a CPU reservation on the machine.

I know that it's not a best practice, I know that was just a hack. But it helped.

The problem is that majority of CAD software don't use K1/K2 profiles correctly. Neither vDGA nor vGPU. And all of the graphics loads are serving mostly by CPU not GPU. Especially Autodesk software.

BTW, some CAD software like AVEVA PDMS and Intergraph SmartPlant 3D works perfectly with vGPU.

[ITVisionIT]

Hello,

Thank you for the response.

Interesting enough we have notice the CPU usage vs the GPU usage with Autodesk Plant 3D 2016 application.  CPU usage was a lot higher on the CPU vs the vGPU.  We noticed this on physical machines as well.

I would think reducing the vCPU count from 4-2 would help in situations where your CPU Ready time was high.  We were at 2vCPU and we increased it to 4 vCPU which actually helped a little, without increasing the CPU Ready time by much.

We are primarily a Autodesk shop using products like Plant 3D, Revit, Civil 3D, Recap.

[RandyDGroves]

Curious what clients you are using. Have you tried PCoIP zero clients?

[raoki]

Hello,

Have you tried your CAD application with NVIDIA Tesla M60/M6/M10 cards?  These cards have sufficient number of H.264 encoder engines which Blast Extreme is highly optimized to leverage and help offload the encoding from CPU.  Users will get the best of both worlds with vGPU and H.264 encoding which will result in increased density, improve latency and frame rate.

I also recommend viewing presentations from VMworld 2016 at the links provided below.

Showcase Test - EUC7601 - Advances in Remote Display Protocol Technology with VMware Blast Extreme

EUC7998 - The Latest in High-Performance Desktops and Applications with Horizon 7, Blast Extreme Pro...

Thank you. 

[AlexeyKhudyakov]

All of my CAD Teams have been using HP T310 zero clients.