Hi, this is my first venture into VMware. I've have some experience with VMs with Hyper-V, but I'm no expert.
I'm trying to set up my first VMware host. I have a Xeon workstation (Dell Precision 3620) with a Nvidia K2200 graphics card. We will be running 3D graphics programs (AutoCAD, Revit, Google Earth Pro) on the VMs, so we need to have a hardware graphics accelerator available to the VMs. I see the Enable 3D Support under 3D Graphics in the machine options. I would think that is what I need, but the option is grayed out. I manually enabled it by setting the parameter "mks.enable3d = TRUE". That seemed to tell my programs that they had hardware graphics support, but performance was worse -- I think the VM was promising something that it wasn't able to deliver.
I'm working on my host/vms through the web interface. When look at my host, under Manage, Hardware, I see the Quadro K2200, but it's listed as Disabled. I thought I might need to install a driver, so I followed the instructions found here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2033434. I figured out how to upload the .vib file to my datastore and loaded it with the following commands:
[root@localhost:~] esxcli software vib install -v /vmfs/volumes/SSD01/NVIDIA-367.92.vib
Installation Result
Message: Operation finished successfully.
Reboot Required: false
VIBs Installed: NVIDIA_bootbank_NVIDIA-kepler-VMware_ESXi_6.5_Host_Driver_367.92-1OEM.650.0.0.4598673
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:
[root@localhost:~] /etc/init.d/xorg start
I did restart the host even though it was not supposed to be required. I now have NVIDIA Accellerated Graphics Driver for VMware ESXi 6.5 showing up under Packages for the Host. However, the Quadro K2200 under Hardware is still disabled, Toggle passthrough is grayed out and the Enable 3D Support on the VM is still grayed out.
Is there something simple that I'm missing? Is it harder than I thought to enable hardware graphics? Maybe I just have the wrong driver? Is any of this easier with through a different management interface? I've seen reference to c# and vCenter or vSphere, I think. Not sure if they are current and/or better. I've got multiple VMs running, so I've done OK with figuring out some of this stuff. If anyone can help me out with this, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Mike
