PC Graphics

[juliuspiv]

I'm going to lead off with the fact that I do not represent a corporate entity which means I don't have the means to purchase high-end cards specifically for this purpose.  This is purely for educational, proof of concept & testing purposes in a home lab environment.

As the topic suggests, I'm just looking for a list of GPUs that support Discrete Device Assignment (DDA) in Server 2016 so I can pass through GPU's (or vGPU's if the card supports it) to Hyper-V VMs running on a Dell PowerEdge R710 Gen II.

My objective is to:

• locate some sort of datasheet with a[n exhaustive] list of cards
• understand whether or not it's possible to know ahead of time which cards do or do not support DDA
• understand which cards (outside of high-end cards like S7150 or S7150x2) support virtual GPU's
• get firsthand accounts from others who have done this complete with gotcha's, lessons learned tips etc.

My biggest concern is stability: Although it's just for testing & labbing, I don't want to waste cycles jumping through a bunch of hoops to create something hackish that could result in the server BSOD'ing.

I've read some things online that suggest AMD doesn't currently do anything to artificially limit or otherwise nerf or prevent the use of it's cards in virtual environments.  Candidly, I appreciate that decision and I hope it stays.  But I'm reaching out to the community for some guidance and recommendations as I don't have the means to burn through various models (e.g.: Radeon HD 6950, Radeon HD 6450, Radeon 3870 FirePro W5000 etc) in trial & error.

Also, just to clarify further this is not about RemoteFX: If I'm understanding things correctly, RemoteFX would require RDS licensing and I just don't have the means for all that.  So DDA would allow me to add one or two inexpensive cards into a machine for use in VM's without having to spend a fortune on licensing.  I'm open to correction here as I'm not an exprt on the subject.

Thanks in advance!

[elstaci]

This post about a Server environment will be better posted here : AMD Server Gurus .  Here are the experts on Servers and it software.

[juliuspiv]

Thanks elstaci​ - I'll cast a net there in hopes of reaching a wider audience.

[hardcoregames_]

juliuspiv wrote:

I'm going to lead off with the fact that I do not represent a corporate entity which means I don't have the means to purchase high-end cards specifically for this purpose. This is purely for educational, proof of concept & testing purposes in a home lab environment.

As the topic suggests, I'm just looking for a list of GPUs that support Discrete Device Assignment (DDA) in Server 2016 so I can pass through GPU's (or vGPU's if the card supports it) to Hyper-V VMs running on a Dell PowerEdge R710 Gen II.

My objective is to:

• locate some sort of datasheet with a[n exhaustive] list of cards
• understand whether or not it's possible to know ahead of time which cards do or do not support DDA
• understand which cards (outside of high-end cards like S7150 or S7150x2) support virtual GPU's
• get firsthand accounts from others who have done this complete with gotcha's, lessons learned tips etc.

My biggest concern is stability: Although it's just for testing & labbing, I don't want to waste cycles jumping through a bunch of hoops to create something hackish that could result in the server BSOD'ing.

I've read some things online that suggest AMD doesn't currently do anything to artificially limit or otherwise nerf or prevent the use of it's cards in virtual environments. Candidly, I appreciate that decision and I hope it stays. But I'm reaching out to the community for some guidance and recommendations as I don't have the means to burn through various models (e.g.: Radeon HD 6950, Radeon HD 6450, Radeon 3870 FirePro W5000 etc) in trial & error.

Also, just to clarify further this is not about RemoteFX: If I'm understanding things correctly, RemoteFX would require RDS licensing and I just don't have the means for all that. So DDA would allow me to add one or two inexpensive cards into a machine for use in VM's without having to spend a fortune on licensing. I'm open to correction here as I'm not an exprt on the subject.

Thanks in advance!

Cards with GCN will work ok with Windows Server to pass through to the guest VMs

AMD integrated Vega graphics are a lot more useful for a server as the cores are on die making it space efficient.

Unless you are running games, Vega is good enough

[juliuspiv]

Good information here hardcoregames™​ - thanks!

I gotta say, for non-gaming and purely testing purposes, I was hoping to get away with an older model (read: inexpensive) card to avoid spending a small fortune to buy a graphics core next GPU.

[hardcoregames_]

juliuspiv wrote:

Good information here hardcoregames™ - thanks!

I gotta say, for non-gaming and purely testing purposes, I was hoping to get away with an older model (read: inexpensive) card to avoid spending a small fortune to buy a graphics core next GPU.

With the segmented architecture it is a lot easier now to provide graphics to a given virtual machine. Hyper-V in Windows server recognizes both NVIDIA and AMD gaming cards and even lower cost cards like the RX 560 are quite suitable

[ephroninc]

For anyone still interested in this topic, I tested DDA on S7000 and S10000 with Windows Server 2016 host, Windows Server 2016 guest.  I was required to use the 17.12 version of the drivers to get as far as I did.  Newer drivers cause more trouble.  Everything appears to work normally until, random host server BSOD when connecting remotely to the guest.  Conclusion: Do not use DDA with the early S series, since I don't think the drivers were even updated to try to support it.  Like the original post, I'm wondering which Firepro multi-processor S models would work with DDA, if any.