vSGA poor performance or misconfigured

[larjona]

Hi

On a Dell VRTX with a AMD W7000 GPU installed, we use a Dell M630 server for vSphere 6.0 u2 and Horizon View 7.0.1.

We created two pools.

Pool A:

• with 3D Renderer: Hardware.

Pool B:

• with 3D Renderer: disabled

We used HTML5 fish bowl to test both pools.

Desktops on pool B have better fps that desktops on pool A.

Both pools shows VMware SVGA 3D as display adapters:

GPU seems installed correctly

"vSGA" and "SVGA 3D" use VMware tools drivers. Must I expect to see vSGA on "Windows Device Manager"?

We want to use a shared vSGA configuration. No vDGA are needed.

Best regards,

[larjona]

Drivers installed.

xorg running.

[Linjo]

According to me the best way to verify if you have vSGA working or not is to use GPU Caps VIew and try the "Fury Cube"

With vSGA you should get close to 30fps, without 1-3 fps-

With browser are using for you fishbowl test? IE?

// Linjo

[larjona]

Hi Linjo

We use Google Chrome (last version). Desktops are Windows 7 Enterprise 32 bits.

With VLC player, desktops on pool B with 3D Renderer: disabled, plays better that desktops on pool A :smileyconfused:

[Linjo]

First things first, did you try with GPU Caps viewer?

With Chrome, try to turn off “Use hardware acceleration where available” in Settings -> Advanced Settings

// Linjo

[larjona]

Hi LInjo

Pool A with 3D renderer: Hardware

Pool B with 3D renderder: disabled

[Linjo]

Great! That means that vSGA is correctly configured and works as expected.

Any more questions?

// Linjo

[larjona]

We are very disconcerted. We are not able to find the source of the problem.

VLC playback show choppy video. We don't know why pool A with 3D renderer have a worse performance.

[Linjo]

To be honest I am not sure what the problem is that you are referring to? Could you add some more details here about the usecase etc?

So as far as I know VLC is not a 3D application and will not really benefit from additional graphics capabilities.

When you are using vSGA its introducing a more complex rendering path then without it. (not sure if that is why you have this issue or not)

If its generic user experience that you want to improve I would rather spend time on tuning PCoIP settings then adding GPU:s

// Linjo

[Ray_handels]

We have tested vSGA a very long time ago so maybe performance is much better now than it was back then but we were very disappointed with what we were seeing with vSGA.

We eventually went for vGPU which (at least up until now) is just as expensive as vSGA is. Difference is that you actually have your own GPU assigned to your desktop. If using a K1 you could potentially give 32 VDI's a GPU which performs waaay better than vSGA.

Unfortenately it seems as if NVidia is trying to make this it's cash cow as you need to have license if you are to use the new M6 or M60 cards.

[larjona]

Hi Linjo

This a school environment. Users needs to play video and maybe some 3D applications like google earth, etc.

We want to use vSGA platform.

With no session logged this is the amdgpustatus output command:

With no session logged this is the gpuvm output command:

No GPU activity. Only one desktop with vSGA maximun memory assigned: 512 MB.

When we use a 3D application or a VLC, or MPHTC player, the GPU takes that work proccess.

With only one desktop running, with a movie playing on, amdgpustatus shows high values and we don't get a god performance:

Respect to PCoIP tunning, we don't find any user guide or admin guide to be trully efective. There is a lot of pages with settings, literature, but to nothing seems to get a trully configuration that final users can feel that they don't have a traditional PC over their desktops. We are working in a LAN environment. No WAN access needed. So I think that all PCoIP settings that I founds seems to try to get better performance on a WAN or remote environment. But in a LAN environment, we should not have any restrictions.

Best regards,

[Ray_handels]

Just a small question. When you created the  pool, what protocol did you select and do you allow users to choose the protocol?

When using vSGA you do need to make sure that 3D renderer is set to Hardware or automatic, not software, otherwise it wont use the vSGA feature but it will use software.

Also, how much memory did you assign to the 3d Renderer?? Keep in mind if you have a 2GB Physical GPU and you assign 512 MB to a machine it can only start up 8 VDI's with hardware rendering, it will take half of it's memory from the GPU, the other half of it's RAM. If you set 3d Renderer to Hardware only and start up the max amount of machines and try to start up one more it should fail. This way you could test if it is actually claiming the memory from the card.

All of that being said we tested both vSGA and vGPU and eventually went with vGPU due to way better performance. Downside of vGPU though is it is more expensive and you cant hot migrate a VDI machine which sucks during maintenance

[larjona]

Hi Ray_handles

This is my configuration:

I know that 512MB is a big configuration. But right now I'm in a test phase. And sincenrely, I'm very frustated and I'm trying "desperate measures"...

[Ray_handels]

Hey Iarjona,

That settings is correct and looking at the information you posted earler it is working as intended.

I'm afraid that this is it. As said in an earlier post, we tested it even with an APEX2800 card and were very disappointed with what we saw. Especially is your looking at what we invested into this.

That's why we eventually went for vGPU. If you do have the option to get your hands on a K1 card i would suggest testing it with this. The difference in performance is huge. Still, I do understand if your somewhat reluctant against vGPU due to costs of a K1 card. But when I look at your current config with a 4GB GPU and 512 MB per machine you can only service 16 machines with vSGA. If you have a K1 card you can service up to 32 machines.

[larjona]

Hi all

More data, from VI Console, system reach 54 fps maximum.

From View client (software) or from Wyse D90D8 thin client only 31 fps maximum reached.

[Linjo]

PCoIP is capped to 30fps, that is why you see that.

Import and configure the Horizon View Group Policys to change that.

// Linjo

[larjona]

Hi Linjo

Look at this capture:

I have configured 120 fps. But llok at the paragraph "These image quality values apply to the soft host only and have no effect on a soft client"

What does mean "soft host"?

Now I get this capture from view client in remote manner. But with a wyse thin client D90D8 with the same View client that I used to get this picture, I get the same results.:smileyconfused: