On premise Grid GPU proof of concept

Hello everyone. I’ve been asked to stand up a small, and more importantly, cheap GPU-backed proof of concept environment. While it would be great to simply utilize NVIDIA’s Grid Test Drive, the client has absolutely no faith in anything cloud based. It simply MUST be on premise.

That said, I’ve been given an IBM x3650 M4 server, which only officially supports K2 cards. Assuming it’s even possible, does anyone happen to know where I can get a cheap, used K2 card? All the cards I see on eBay are over a thousand dollars, which, apparently, is too costly.

Thank you for reading this.

They are in high demand and remain expensive because, in part, there are no licensing fees involved. Why not try a basic Quadro card as a PoC, and just run it in passthrough mode with a Windows Server as your host?

Hello yet again, Tobias! Thanks again for your input.

I would try a Quadro, which I have available, but it doesn’t support vGPU.

Why does your client have no faith in Cloud based GPU instances? Azure, AWS, Fra.me, Cloudalize, 3XS and many many many others have no issues with Cloud based GPU instances? What is it your client doesn’t like?

As for testing Kepler GPUs today. I’ll save you the trouble … Don’t bother. Absolute waste of time with existing technologies out there now. Your client will learn nothing about performance as the newer technologies really are that much better. Kepler has already been superceeded twice and when Volta hits GRID, that’ll be three generations out of date. You’re far better asking your client to wait until you can use Maxwell at an absolute minimum and test on that. Another problem with testing on Kepler is that even the GRID software will be really old, as you need at least Maxwell to be running 5.x.

If your client wants to test in the meantime, then just run Quadro in Passthrough for now. That’ll give you an idea of what you can expect on the newer GPU architectures, and if they want to test multiple sessions simultaneously on it, just run it as a XenApp / RDS VM.

Regards