Deploying a GPU instance

Objective

GPU instances are technically similar to the instances from the older range, but they also have a graphics card (Graphic Processing Unit or GPU). The technology used (pci_passthrough) allows the instance’s operating system to control the GPU in exactly the same way a physical machine would.

This guide explains how to deploy a GPU instance on Linux or Windows

Requirements

• A Public Cloud project with access to the regions where most GPUs are available (GRA7, GRA9, GRA11 and BHS5)
• An SSH key created to deploy a linux GPU instance.

OVHcloud Control Panel Access

• Direct link: Public Cloud Projects
• Navigation path: Public Cloud > Select your project

Instructions

You will find the information needed to deploy a GPU instance on Linux or Windows below.

On Linux

All the images we offer can be used on a GPU instance.

Click on Instances in the left-hand menu under the Compute tab. Next, click on Create an instance and choose a compatible GPU instance:

Next, follow the remaining steps as detailed in this guide. This process may take a few minutes.

Once the instance is delivered, you can then log in and check for the graphics card:

lspci | grep -i nvidia
00:05.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 1c03 (rev a1)
00:06.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation Device 10f1 (rev a1)

The graphics card is there, but cannot be used yet. To do so, you must first install the NVIDIA driver. You can find the list of packages at this address: List of available Linux packages.

You will then need to enter the following commands:

wget URL_of_packet_to_download
sudo dpkg -i cuda-repo-XXXX-XXXXXX
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install cuda
sudo apt-get install -y cuda-drivers
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo reboot

Once the instance has been rebooted, the graphics card will appear in the NVIDIA utility program:

nvidia-smi
Wed Apr 26 13:05:25 2017
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 375.51                 Driver Version: 375.51                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 106...  Off  | 0000:00:05.0     Off |                  N/A |
|  0%   22C    P0    26W / 120W |      0MiB /  6072MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID  Type  Process name                               Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The GPU instance is now fully functional and usable.

On Windows

There are incompatibilities between the NVIDIA driver and the KVM/pci_passthrough virtualisation solution. Windows standard images do not work.

We offer special images, based on a virtual UEFI BIOS, which allow the driver to function correctly:

Click on Instances in the left-hand menu under the Compute tab. Next, click on Create an instance and choose a compatible GPU instance:

In the next step, go to the Windows operating systems tab and click ont the drop-down arrow to select the compatible Windows image:

Next, follow the remaining steps as detailed in this guide. This process may take a few minutes.

Connecting to a Windows OS instance

After the instance has been created, the Windows installation needs to be finalised (sysprep). To achieve this, click on ... and then on Instance details. Switch to the tab VNC console. The console should already display the post-installation interface.

In the first step, decide on your localisation settings by selecting a region, a language and a keyboard layout. Click on Next to proceed.

The second step requires to set up the default "Administrator" account. Enter your passphrase twice and click on Finish to complete the installation process. Use the eye symbol to check if all the characters entered into the fields match the actual layout of your keyboard.

The instance will reboot and you will be able to log in with these credentials using a remote desktop client.

From Windows

Use the Windows Search if necessary and open the native "Remote Desktop Connection" client application.

Enter the IPv4 address of your instance and "Administrator" as the user, then type your passphrase. Usually, a warning message will appear, asking to confirm the connection because of an unknown certificate. Click on Yes to log in to the instance.

Once you have connected to your instance, you will need to install the NVIDIA driver from the official website.

Afterwards, all that’s left to do is to install the required driver, which will then be displayed here:

Going further

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