Deploying a GPU instance
Find out how to deploy a GPU instance on Linux or Windows
Last updated 2018/10/30
Objective
GPU instances are technically similar to the instances from the 2017 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.
The GPUs offered are the NVIDIA Tesla V100.
At the moment, GPU instances are only available in the GRA3, GRA5, GRA7 and BHS3 datacentres. You may have to create a new project and choose the new 2017 range.
This guide explains how to deploy a GPU instance on Linux or Windows
Requirements
- A Public Cloud project with access to the regions where GPUs are available (GRA3, GRA5 and BHS3)
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.
If you don’t feel comfortable with manually compiling a kernel module, we recommend using a distribution that is officially supported by Nvidia and for which they provide turnkey drivers: https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads.
Once you are logged in to the OVHcloud Control Panel, in your Public Cloud project, click on Add serverand choose a GPU instance:
The instance will start a few seconds later. 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 reboot
The Linux command can vary based on your distribution. If in doubt, please check the official guide for your version of Linux.
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:
We cannot guarantee that the solution will work with all future versions of the NVIDIA driver.
Before performing any update of the NVIDIA driver, we strongly recommend that you take a snapshot that will allow you to do a rollback, if necessary.
Once your GPU instance has started, you will need to install the NVIDIA driver from the official website.
Start an instance using one of the available GPU types (win-g1-15, win-g1-30...). This should only take a few minutes.
Afterwards, all that’s left to do is to install the required driver, which will then be displayed here:
Going further
Join our community of users on https://community.ovh.com/en/.
Did you find this guide useful?
Please feel free to give any suggestions in order to improve this documentation.
Whether your feedback is about images, content, or structure, please share it, so that we can improve it together.
Your support requests will not be processed via this form. To do this, please use the "Create a ticket" form.
Thank you. Your feedback has been received.