NVIDIA DGX H-series systems do not support virtualization in RHEL or Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • RHEL 8.8 and up
  • RHEL 9.2 and up
  • KVM Virtualization
  • Red Hat OpenShift v4.11 and up
  • NVIDIA DGX H-series system (seen on NVIDIA DGX H100 and H200 models during certification)

Issue

Unable to enable or start QEMU-KVM virtualization features on RHEL 8 or RHEL 9 installations on NVIDIA DGX H-series systems after adjusting BIOS settings enabling Intel VT-x or VT-D virtualization features.

Unable to enable OpenShift Virtualization features on Red Hat OpenShift versions v4.11 and up on NVIDIA DGX H-series systems after adjusting BIOS settings enabling Intel VT-x or VT-D virtualization features.

Resolution

There is no resolution for this issue. Intel VT-x and VT-D virtualization features cannot be enabled on these platforms, per the platform vendor. KVM virtualization, therefore, is unavailable.

Root Cause

Intel VT-x and VT-D CPU virtualization features are disabled by the vendor on NVIDIA DGX H-series systems. There are settings in the system BIOS to allow enabling Intel VT-x and VT-D technologies; however, those settings do not have any effect - CPU virtualization features via KVM remain unavailable even when they are set to 'enabled' in the BIOS.

  • Component
  • kvm

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