Citrix XenDesktop 7.5 on Win 7 VM with GPU passed through does not work as expected

Virtual GPU Forums More vGPU Forums XenDesktop
1

Hello.

First of all, I’m sorry if I chose the wrong forum. I’m new to the subject and searched a place here to ask my question and this forum seems to be the best place.

Lately I’ve been playing around with Citrix XenServer "Creedence", Citrix XenDesktop 7.5 and the NVIDIA GTX TITAN. Before this I’ve read The XEN Book and got myself used to the Xen hypervisor.
So my final goal is to create a demo stand with:

  1. a VM with MS Windows 7 (let it be win7test1)
  2. with passed through GPU (TITAN)
  3. XenDesktop 7.5 on win7test1
  4. AND finally test graphically intense apps - games or something from Adobe - via the HDX 3d pro + Citrix receiver.

I’ve made the demo stand with the following configuration:

  1. Citrix XenServer "Creedence"
  2. The 1st VM on Windows Server 2012 R2 for domain controller
  3. The 2nd VM on Windows Server 2012 R2 for Citrix XenDesktop studio, StroreFront server, license server and stuff.
  4. The 3rd VM with Windows 7 and Citrix desktop delivery agent. This third VM has the GTX TITAN passed through and the appropriate driver installed.

Then on another physical PC (also Mac) I’ve installed Citrix Receiver and connected to the win7test1 application.

Here’s the most important part of my message: I was expecting that when I connect to the win7test1 VM with TITAN passed through, I will get the HDX 3d pro working out-of-the-box and I will be able to use graphical applications right away. BUT it did not happen. Here’s the screenshot of the devices dispatcher from the win7test1 VM.

External Media

As you can seen there is yellow sign on TITAN (and on the standard VGA adapter).

Of course benchmarks like 3d mark do not work.

At this point my knowledge of the subject ends and I just don’t know how to make it work. Here are two questions:

  1. The most important: what have I done wrong or missed?
  2. The not so important question but it also takes my mind. Suppose TITAN starts working as I expect then how to get rid of the standard VGA adapter?

I will be really thankful for any advice. We have a bunch of TITANs that are rarely used for GPU computing and I really want to expand their utilization.

Thank you.

2

Support for GPU/vGPU is currently just with the GRID series and with Creedence, you need one of the more recent versions to even get GRID support. Have you tried perhaps XenServer 6.2 instead of the Creedence release (which is still just in bata) to see if things work a little better?

Also, you will need to have both the internal video adapter and an additional GPU to make use of GPU features as they are handled separately, so whatever you have for the default adapter should remain left alone when you add a second graphics card.

3

Hi Grigory,

GPU Passthrough only works with selected GPUs (Quadro and GRID for example). Please use a Quadro or GRID card for GPU Passthrough.

Erik Bohnhorst | Solution Architect – GRID
NVIDIA Corporation

4

Hello, Erik.

Thank you for the answer!