Just a short post regarding Nvidia GRID but this may be handy for some of you. Recently, a customer called me explaining virtual machines (VM’s) did not scale correctly and had a square screen. In fact, the horizon client scaled the display in an 800*600 resolution which is the fallback resolution of a windows display driver. This behavior of windows typically indicates that you have an issue with a video driver.
The image above illustrates the exact result which the user experienced.
In our case, I did know from a previous project that the ESXi hosts had NVIDIA GRID cards installed. When I checked the VM’s settings following could be seen:
Something I noticed was that the customer was using the M10-8A profile. So the VM is using the Virtual Applications Settings (vApps).
This means that the following limitations are in place; The vGPU profile will still use 8gb of Frame Buffer but has only 1 virtual display head available.
This head is also hard-limited to a 1024*1280 resolution.
So to fix this, the vGPU profile had to be adjusted to the B or Q profile, This will increase the maximum resolution per head. Plus also the amount of available virtual display heads that can be used.
An important thing to mention is that the B profile is only available with the GRID vPC and vDWS license. And whereas the Q profile is only available with a vDWS license.
After implementing a M10-8Q profile as the vGPU profile, we logged into the VDI, and the resolution was indeed full screen.
So to close this post, choosing the right licensing model when using NVIDIA GRID is essential. As choosing a lower profile has a direct impact on the user experience. More info on NVIDIA Licensing can be found here
Want more troubleshooting tips? check our other blog.