Tesla M60 (GM204GL) and vGPU mode (SR-IOV)

Hello,

I’ve inherited an NVIDIA GM204GL [Tesla M60] and I’m trying to get it to work with SR-IOV for a proof of concept test. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to get SR-IOV to work. I’ll try to be brief:

  • I’ve installed Ubuntu Server 24.04.2 on a Dell PowerEdge R730
  • An NVIDIA Tesla M60 card has been installed in the server; the card is definitely in Graphics mode, tested with gpumodeswitch utility
  • I’ve enabled Global SR-IOV in the BIOS of the server; I’ve disabled Secure Boot to prevent kernel lockdown
  • The latest NVIDIA-GRID-Ubuntu-KVM host drivers have been installed and nouveau blacklisted so that they can take effect
  • I have not as yet installed any GRID licensing server
  • The card is present and recognised as two GPUs:
$ nvidia-smi
Tue Apr 15 08:40:49 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 570.124.03             Driver Version: 570.124.03     CUDA Version: N/A      |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  Tesla M60                      On  |   00000000:84:00.0 Off |                  Off |
| N/A   37C    P8             24W /  150W |      19MiB /   8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
|   1  Tesla M60                      On  |   00000000:85:00.0 Off |                  Off |
| N/A   33C    P8             24W /  150W |      19MiB /   8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                             |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I read that in directory /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000\:84\:00.0 I should expect to see a number of driver special files such as max_vfs but there’s nothing to indicate that SR-IOV is an option for this card. Furthermore, when I run nvidia-smi vgpu I get the message No supported devices in vGPU mode.

Any ideas what additional steps I need to take to get SR-IOV / vGPU mode working?

I could have sworn I read that this card was SR-IOV capable; I thought it was the whole point of the card, i.e. for vGPU on a host with lots of workstation guests. Am I wrong?

Thanks.

Hello,

We figured it out. Leaving this for anyone else that has the same problem as me.

While - yes - this card does support vGPU, it does not support SR-IOV. Instead, vGPU is supported via Mdev (Mediated Device). mdevctl types should result in a list of usable profiles.

However in my case that didn’t work either. Eventually I came to the realisation that with the latest “Complete vGPU 18.0 package” from NVIDIA, the Tesla M60 is no longer supported. Instead I downloaded “Complete vGPU 16.9 package” and installed that.

Things are now working!

Thanks.