Chapter 14. Configuring virtual GPUs for instances

To support GPU-based rendering on your instances, you can define and manage virtual GPU (vGPU) resources according to your available physical GPU devices and your hypervisor type. You can use this configuration to divide the rendering workloads between all your physical GPU devices more effectively, and to have more control over scheduling your vGPU-enabled instances.

To enable vGPU in the Compute (nova) service, create flavors that your cloud users can use to create Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) instances with vGPU devices. Each instance can then support GPU workloads with virtual GPU devices that correspond to the physical GPU devices.

The Compute service tracks the number of vGPU devices that are available for each GPU profile you define on each host. The Compute service schedules instances to these hosts based on the flavor, attaches the devices, and monitors usage on an ongoing basis. When an instance is deleted, the Compute service adds the vGPU devices back to the available pool.

Important

Red Hat enables the use of NVIDIA vGPU in RHOSP without the requirement for support exceptions. However, Red Hat does not provide technical support for the NVIDIA vGPU drivers. The NVIDIA vGPU drivers are shipped and supported by NVIDIA. You require an NVIDIA Certified Support Services subscription to obtain NVIDIA Enterprise Support for NVIDIA vGPU software. For issues that result from the use of NVIDIA vGPUs where you are unable to reproduce the issue on a supported component, the following support policies apply:

14.1. Supported configurations and limitations

Supported GPU cards

For a list of supported NVIDIA GPU cards, see Virtual GPU Software Supported Products on the NVIDIA website.

Limitations when using vGPU devices

  • You can enable only one vGPU type on each Compute node.
  • Each instance can use only one vGPU resource.
  • Live migration of vGPU instances between hosts is not supported.
  • Evacuation of vGPU instances is not supported.
  • If you need to reboot the Compute node that hosts the vGPU instances, the vGPUs are not automatically reassigned to the recreated instances. You must either cold migrate the instances before you reboot the Compute node, or manually allocate each vGPU to the correct instance after reboot. To manually allocate each vGPU, you must retrieve the mdev UUID from the instance XML for each vGPU instance that runs on the Compute node before you reboot. You can use the following command to discover the mdev UUID for each instance:

    # virsh dumpxml <instance_name> | grep mdev

    Replace <instance_name> with the libvirt instance name, OS-EXT-SRV-ATTR:instance_name, returned in a /servers request to the Compute API.

  • Suspend operations on a vGPU-enabled instance is not supported due to a libvirt limitation. Instead, you can snapshot or shelve the instance.
  • By default, vGPU types on Compute hosts are not exposed to API users. To grant access, add the hosts to a host aggregate. For more information, see Creating and managing host aggregates.
  • If you use NVIDIA accelerator hardware, you must comply with the NVIDIA licensing requirements. For example, NVIDIA vGPU GRID requires a licensing server. For more information about the NVIDIA licensing requirements, see NVIDIA License Server Release Notes on the NVIDIA website.

14.2. Configuring vGPU on the Compute nodes

To enable your cloud users to create instances that use a virtual GPU (vGPU), you must configure the Compute nodes that have the physical GPUs:

  1. Designate Compute nodes for vGPU.
  2. Configure the Compute node for vGPU.
  3. Deploy the overcloud.
  4. Create a vGPU flavor for launching instances that have vGPU.
Tip

If the GPU hardware is limited, you can also configure a host aggregate to optimize scheduling on the vGPU Compute nodes. To schedule only instances that request vGPUs on the vGPU Compute nodes, create a host aggregate of the vGPU Compute nodes, and configure the Compute scheduler to place only vGPU instances on the host aggregate. For more information, see Creating and managing host aggregates and Filtering by isolating host aggregates.

Note

To use an NVIDIA GRID vGPU, you must comply with the NVIDIA GRID licensing requirements and you must have the URL of your self-hosted license server. For more information, see the NVIDIA License Server Release Notes web page.

14.2.1. Prerequisites

  • You have downloaded the NVIDIA GRID host driver RPM package that corresponds to your GPU device from the NVIDIA website. To determine which driver you need, see the NVIDIA Driver Downloads Portal. You must be a registered NVIDIA customer to download the drivers from the portal.
  • You have built a custom overcloud image that has the NVIDIA GRID host driver installed.

14.2.2. Designating Compute nodes for vGPU

To designate Compute nodes for vGPU workloads, you must create a new role file to configure the vGPU role, and configure a new overcloud flavor and resource class to use to tag the GPU-enabled Compute nodes.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the undercloud as the stack user.
  2. Source the stackrc file:

    [stack@director ~]$ source ~/stackrc
  3. Generate a new roles data file named roles_data_gpu.yaml that includes the Controller, Compute, and ComputeGpu roles:

    (undercloud)$ openstack overcloud roles \
      generate -o /home/stack/templates/roles_data_gpu.yaml \
      Compute:ComputeGpu Compute Controller
  4. Open roles_data_gpu.yaml and edit or add the following parameters and sections:

    Section/ParameterCurrent valueNew value

    Role comment

    Role: Compute

    Role: ComputeGpu

    Role name

    name: Compute

    name: ComputeGpu

    description

    Basic Compute Node role

    GPU Compute Node role

    ImageDefault

    n/a

    overcloud-full-gpu

    HostnameFormatDefault

    -compute-

    -computegpu-

    deprecated_nic_config_name

    compute.yaml

    compute-gpu.yaml

  5. Register the GPU-enabled Compute nodes for the overcloud by adding them to your node definition template, node.json or node.yaml. For more information, see Registering nodes for the overcloud in the Director Installation and Usage guide.
  6. Inspect the node hardware:

    (undercloud)$ openstack overcloud node introspect --all-manageable \
     --provide

    For more information, see Creating an inventory of the bare-metal node hardware in the Director Installation and Usage guide.

  7. Create the compute-vgpu-nvidia overcloud flavor for vGPU Compute nodes:

    (undercloud)$ openstack flavor create --id auto \
      --ram <ram_size_mb> --disk <disk_size_gb> \
      --vcpus <no_vcpus> compute-vgpu-nvidia
    • Replace <ram_size_mb> with the RAM of the bare metal node, in MB.
    • Replace <disk_size_gb> with the size of the disk on the bare metal node, in GB.
    • Replace <no_vcpus> with the number of CPUs on the bare metal node.

      Note

      These properties are not used for scheduling instances. However, the Compute scheduler does use the disk size to determine the root partition size.

  8. Tag each bare metal node that you want to designate for GPU workloads with a custom GPU resource class:

    (undercloud)$ openstack baremetal node set \
     --resource-class baremetal.GPU <node>

    Replace <node> with the ID of the baremetal node.

  9. Associate the compute-vgpu-nvidia flavor with the custom GPU resource class:

    (undercloud)$ openstack flavor set \
     --property resources:CUSTOM_BAREMETAL_GPU=1 \
      compute-vgpu-nvidia

    To determine the name of a custom resource class that corresponds to a resource class of a Bare Metal service node, convert the resource class to uppercase, replace all punctuation with an underscore, and prefix with CUSTOM_.

    Note

    A flavor can request only one instance of a bare metal resource class.

  10. Set the following flavor properties to prevent the Compute scheduler from using the bare metal flavor properties to schedule instances:

    (undercloud)$ openstack flavor set \
     --property resources:VCPU=0 --property resources:MEMORY_MB=0 \
     --property resources:DISK_GB=0 compute-vgpu-nvidia
  11. To verify that the role was created, enter the following command:

    (undercloud)$ openstack overcloud profiles list

14.2.3. Configuring the Compute node for vGPU and deploying the overcloud

You need to retrieve and assign the vGPU type that corresponds to the physical GPU device in your environment, and prepare the environment files to configure the Compute node for vGPU.

Procedure

  1. Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the NVIDIA GRID driver on a temporary Compute node and launch the node.
  2. On the Compute node, locate the vGPU type of the physical GPU device that you want to enable. For libvirt, virtual GPUs are mediated devices, or mdev type devices. To discover the supported mdev devices, enter the following command:

    [root@overcloud-computegpu-0 ~]# ls /sys/class/mdev_bus/0000\:06\:00.0/mdev_supported_types/
    nvidia-11  nvidia-12  nvidia-13  nvidia-14  nvidia-15  nvidia-16  nvidia-17  nvidia-18  nvidia-19  nvidia-20  nvidia-21  nvidia-210  nvidia-22
    
    [root@overcloud-computegpu-0 ~]# cat /sys/class/mdev_bus/0000\:06\:00.0/mdev_supported_types/nvidia-18/description
    num_heads=4, frl_config=60, framebuffer=2048M, max_resolution=4096x2160, max_instance=4
  3. Register the Net::SoftwareConfig of the ComputeGpu role in your network-environment.yaml file:

    resource_registry:
      OS::TripleO::Compute::Net::SoftwareConfig: /home/stack/templates/nic-configs/compute.yaml
      OS::TripleO::ComputeGpu::Net::SoftwareConfig: /home/stack/templates/nic-configs/compute-gpu.yaml
      OS::TripleO::Controller::Net::SoftwareConfig: /home/stack/templates/nic-configs/controller.yaml
  4. Add the following parameters to the node-info.yaml file to specify the number of GPU Compute nodes, and the flavor to use for the GPU-designated Compute nodes:

    parameter_defaults:
      OvercloudControllerFlavor: control
      OvercloudComputeFlavor: compute
      OvercloudComputeGpuFlavor: compute-vgpu-nvidia
      ControllerCount: 1
      ComputeCount: 0
      ComputeGpuCount: 1
  5. Create a gpu.yaml file to specify the vGPU type of your GPU device:

    parameter_defaults:
      ComputeGpuExtraConfig:
        nova::compute::vgpu::enabled_vgpu_types:
          - nvidia-18
    Note

    Each physical GPU supports only one virtual GPU type. If you specify multiple vGPU types in this property, only the first type is used.

  6. Save the updates to your Compute environment file.
  7. Add your new role and environment files to the stack with your other environment files and deploy the overcloud:

    (undercloud)$ openstack overcloud deploy --templates \
      -e [your environment files] \
      -r /home/stack/templates/roles_data_gpu.yaml \
      -e /home/stack/templates/network-environment.yaml \
      -e /home/stack/templates/gpu.yaml \
      -e /home/stack/templates/node-info.yaml

14.3. Creating a custom GPU instance image

To enable your cloud users to create instances that use a virtual GPU (vGPU), you can create a custom vGPU-enabled image for launching instances. Use the following procedure to create a custom vGPU-enabled instance image with the NVIDIA GRID guest driver and license file.

Prerequisites

  • You have configured and deployed the overcloud with GPU-enabled Compute nodes.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the undercloud as the stack user.
  2. Source the overcloudrc credential file:

    $ source ~/overcloudrc
  3. Create an instance with the hardware and software profile that your vGPU instances require:

    (overcloud)$ openstack server create --flavor <flavor> \
     --image <image> temp_vgpu_instance
    • Replace <flavor> with the name or ID of the flavor that has the hardware profile that your vGPU instances require. For information about creating a vGPU flavor, see Creating a vGPU flavor for instances.
    • Replace <image> with the name or ID of the image that has the software profile that your vGPU instances require. For information about downloading RHEL cloud images, see Image service.
  4. Log in to the instance as a cloud-user.
  5. Create the gridd.conf NVIDIA GRID license file on the instance, following the NVIDIA guidance: Licensing an NVIDIA vGPU on Linux by Using a Configuration File.
  6. Install the GPU driver on the instance. For more information about installing an NVIDIA driver, see Installing the NVIDIA vGPU Software Graphics Driver on Linux.

    Note

    Use the hw_video_model image property to define the GPU driver type. You can choose none if you want to disable the emulated GPUs for your vGPU instances. For more information about supported drivers, see Image metadata.

  7. Create an image snapshot of the instance:

    (overcloud)$ openstack server image create \
     --name vgpu_image temp_vgpu_instance
  8. Optional: Delete the instance.

14.4. Creating a vGPU flavor for instances

To enable your cloud users to create instances for GPU workloads, you can create a GPU flavor that can be used to launch vGPU instances, and assign the vGPU resource to that flavor.

Prerequisites

  • You have configured and deployed the overcloud with GPU-designated Compute nodes.

Procedure

  1. Create an NVIDIA GPU flavor, for example:

    (overcloud)$ openstack flavor create --vcpus 6 \
     --ram 8192 --disk 100 m1.small-gpu
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | Field                      | Value                                |
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled   | False                                |
    | OS-FLV-EXT-DATA:ephemeral  | 0                                    |
    | disk                       | 100                                  |
    | id                         | a27b14dd-c42d-4084-9b6a-225555876f68 |
    | name                       | m1.small-gpu                         |
    | os-flavor-access:is_public | True                                 |
    | properties                 |                                      |
    | ram                        | 8192                                 |
    | rxtx_factor                | 1.0                                  |
    | swap                       |                                      |
    | vcpus                      | 6                                    |
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
  2. Assign a vGPU resource to the flavor that you created. You can assign only one vGPU for each instance.

    (overcloud)$ openstack flavor set m1.small-gpu \
     --property "resources:VGPU=1"
    
    (overcloud)$ openstack flavor show m1.small-gpu
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | Field                      | Value                                |
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+
    | OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled   | False                                |
    | OS-FLV-EXT-DATA:ephemeral  | 0                                    |
    | access_project_ids         | None                                 |
    | disk                       | 100                                  |
    | id                         | a27b14dd-c42d-4084-9b6a-225555876f68 |
    | name                       | m1.small-gpu                         |
    | os-flavor-access:is_public | True                                 |
    | properties                 | resources:VGPU='1'                   |
    | ram                        | 8192                                 |
    | rxtx_factor                | 1.0                                  |
    | swap                       |                                      |
    | vcpus                      | 6                                    |
    +----------------------------+--------------------------------------+

14.5. Launching a vGPU instance

You can create a GPU-enabled instance for GPU workloads.

Procedure

  1. Create an instance using a GPU flavor and image, for example:

    (overcloud)$ openstack server create --flavor m1.small-gpu \
     --image vgpu_image --security-group web --nic net-id=internal0 \
     --key-name lambda vgpu-instance
  2. Log in to the instance as a cloud-user.
  3. To verify that the GPU is accessible from the instance, enter the following command from the instance:

    $ lspci -nn | grep <gpu_name>

14.6. Enabling PCI passthrough for a GPU device

You can use PCI passthrough to attach a physical PCI device, such as a graphics card, to an instance. If you use PCI passthrough for a device, the instance reserves exclusive access to the device for performing tasks, and the device is not available to the host.

Prerequisites

  • The pciutils package is installed on the physical servers that have the PCI cards.
  • The driver for the GPU device must be installed on the instance that the device is passed through to. Therefore, you need to have created a custom instance image that has the required GPU driver installed. For more information about how to create a custom instance image with the GPU driver installed, see Creating a custom GPU instance image.

Procedure

  1. To determine the vendor ID and product ID for each passthrough device type, enter the following command on the physical server that has the PCI cards:

    # lspci -nn | grep -i <gpu_name>

    For example, to determine the vendor and product ID for an NVIDIA GPU, enter the following command:

    # lspci -nn | grep -i nvidia
    3b:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104GL [Tesla T4] [10de:1eb8] (rev a1)
    d8:00.0 3D controller [0302]: NVIDIA Corporation TU104GL [Tesla T4] [10de:1db4] (rev a1)
  2. To determine if each PCI device has Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) capabilities, enter the following command on the physical server that has the PCI cards:

    # lspci -v -s 3b:00.0
    3b:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU104GL [Tesla T4] (rev a1)
              ...
              Capabilities: [bcc] Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV)
              ...
  3. To configure the Controller node on the overcloud for PCI passthrough, create an environment file, for example, pci_passthru_controller.yaml.
  4. Add PciPassthroughFilter to the NovaSchedulerDefaultFilters parameter in pci_passthru_controller.yaml:

    parameter_defaults:
      NovaSchedulerDefaultFilters: ['AvailabilityZoneFilter','ComputeFilter','ComputeCapabilitiesFilter','ImagePropertiesFilter','ServerGroupAntiAffinityFilter','ServerGroupAffinityFilter','PciPassthroughFilter','NUMATopologyFilter']
  5. To specify the PCI alias for the devices on the Controller node, add the following configuration to pci_passthru_controller.yaml:

    • If the PCI device has SR-IOV capabilities:

      ControllerExtraConfig:
        nova::pci::aliases:
          - name: "t4"
            product_id: "1eb8"
            vendor_id: "10de"
            device_type: "type-PF"
          - name: "v100"
            product_id: "1db4"
            vendor_id: "10de"
            device_type: "type-PF"
    • If the PCI device does not have SR-IOV capabilities:

      ControllerExtraConfig:
        nova::pci::aliases:
          - name: "t4"
            product_id: "1eb8"
            vendor_id: "10de"
          - name: "v100"
            product_id: "1db4"
            vendor_id: "10de"

      For more information on configuring the device_type field, see PCI passthrough device type field.

      Note

      If the nova-api service is running in a role other than the Controller, then replace ControllerExtraConfig with the user role, in the format <Role>ExtraConfig.

  6. To configure the Compute node on the overcloud for PCI passthrough, create an environment file, for example, pci_passthru_compute.yaml.
  7. To specify the available PCIs for the devices on the Compute node, add the following to pci_passthru_compute.yaml:

    parameter_defaults:
      NovaPCIPassthrough:
        - vendor_id: "10de"
          product_id: "1eb8"
  8. You must create a copy of the PCI alias on the Compute node for instance migration and resize operations. To specify the PCI alias for the devices on the Compute node, add the following to pci_passthru_compute.yaml:

    • If the PCI device has SR-IOV capabilities:

      ComputeExtraConfig:
        nova::pci::aliases:
          - name: "t4"
            product_id: "1eb8"
            vendor_id: "10de"
            device_type: "type-PF"
          - name: "v100"
            product_id: "1db4"
            vendor_id: "10de"
            device_type: "type-PF"
    • If the PCI device does not have SR-IOV capabilities:

      ComputeExtraConfig:
        nova::pci::aliases:
          - name: "t4"
            product_id: "1eb8"
            vendor_id: "10de"
          - name: "v100"
            product_id: "1db4"
            vendor_id: "10de"
      Note

      The Compute node aliases must be identical to the aliases on the Controller node.

  9. To enable IOMMU in the server BIOS of the Compute nodes to support PCI passthrough, add the KernelArgs parameter to pci_passthru_compute.yaml:

    parameter_defaults:
      ...
      ComputeParameters:
        KernelArgs: "intel_iommu=on iommu=pt"
    Note

    When you first add the KernelArgs parameter to the configuration of a role, the overcloud nodes are automatically rebooted. If required, you can disable the automatic rebooting of nodes and instead perform node reboots manually after each overcloud deployment. For more information, see Configuring manual node reboot to define KernelArgs.

  10. Add your custom environment files to the stack with your other environment files and deploy the overcloud:

    (undercloud)$ openstack overcloud deploy --templates \
      -e [your environment files] \
      -e /home/stack/templates/pci_passthru_controller.yaml \
      -e /home/stack/templates/pci_passthru_compute.yaml
  11. Configure a flavor to request the PCI devices. The following example requests two devices, each with a vendor ID of 10de and a product ID of 13f2:

    # openstack flavor set m1.large \
     --property "pci_passthrough:alias"="t4:2"

Verification

  1. Create an instance with a PCI passthrough device:

    # openstack server create --flavor m1.large \
     --image <custom_gpu> --wait test-pci

    Replace <custom_gpu> with the name of your custom instance image that has the required GPU driver installed.

  2. Log in to the instance as a cloud user.
  3. To verify that the GPU is accessible from the instance, enter the following command from the instance:

    $ lspci -nn | grep <gpu_name>
  4. To check the NVIDIA System Management Interface status, enter the following command from the instance:

    $ nvidia-smi

    Example output:

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | NVIDIA-SMI 440.33.01    Driver Version: 440.33.01    CUDA Version: 10.2     |
    |---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    | GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
    | Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
    |===========================================================================|
    |   0  Tesla T4            Off  | 00000000:01:00.0 Off |                    0 |
    | N/A   43C    P0    20W /  70W |      0MiB / 15109MiB |      0%      Default |
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
    |  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
    |=============================================================================|
    |  No running processes found                                                 |
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------