Performance Without Boundaries: Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 Supports NVIDIA vGPU

KVM Hypervisor supports virtual GPU for oil and gas, government,  finance and other open source workflows.
by Anne Hecht

Businesses using Red Hat’s open source solutions can now offer their users a virtual computing experience that is nearly indistinguishable from a physical desktop workstation or PC, thanks to Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) 4.2’s newly added support for NVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU).

Customers using Red Hat Virtualization 4.2, a Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM)-powered virtualization platform, can now use NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Data Center Software (Quadro vDWS) for professional engineering and design applications, and NVIDIA GRID virtual PC (GRID vPC) for common office workloads.

According to research firm IDC, virtual client computing continues to grow and open source environments like Red Hat Virtualization are expected to have the highest growth and market share — reaching over $4 billion by 2022.

NVIDIA vGPU on Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 provides customers an open, software-defined infrastructure and centralized management platform for virtualized Linux and Windows workloads. Only NVIDIA vGPU solutions are supported by the industry’s most popular hypervisors, including VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer and two leaders in KVM-powered virtualization — Nutanix and, now, Red Hat.

“With NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions in their data centers, Red Hat Virtualization customers can run both 3D graphics applications and compute workflows in a virtualized environment — enabling them to collaborate and create across the enterprise without sacrificing performance,” said Gunnar Hellekson, director, product management, Linux and Virtualization at Red Hat.

A Growing Need for GPU Acceleration

Organizations around the world have a growing need for GPU acceleration. Numerical Algorithms Group helps government agencies and businesses in oil and gas, finance and other develop powerful solutions to address their business challenges.

“Our customers have a need to securely visualize and collaborate across global teams, says Shawn Hall, an HPC Systems Analyst at Numerical Algorithms Group. “Working with the massive datasets associated with these industries can prove challenging. “With Red Hat Virtualization and NVIDIA Quadro vDWS, large datasets can be managed in a centralized data center with enhanced performance while physical infrastructure utilization is optimized.”

Hear more from Shawn Hall when he discusses his Red Hat Virtualization and NVIDIA Quadro vDWS deployment with Luke Wignall, NVIDIA’s  performance engineering and technical marketing manager, during our June 5 webinar.

NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions are designed to run with the world’s most powerful NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. For more information about NVIDIA virtual GPU technology see www.nvidia.com/vgpu.