Instantiate a GPU I-SBC on VMware

This document describes the steps to configure VMware ESXi for GPU passthrough and launch the GPU SBC instance with recommended performance settings.

Prerequisites

Hardware requirements on the VMware ESXi Host

• For hardware requirements, refer to For VMware.
• For GPU accelerated instances of VMware, Ribbonrecommends to use Intel's Skylake architecture or above with Gold or Platinum class processor.
• GPUs supported: NVIDIA V100 16/32 GB PCIe variants. Verify if the NVIDIA Graphics card is supported on a given VMware ESXi version using the link: VMware Compatibility Guide.

Configurations on Hypervisor

Before creating a VM and installing the SBC SWe software, create the virtual environment on the host as described in the section Configuring Your Network for SBC SWe on VMware. For GPU accelerated solutions, configure the GPU passthrough from VMware ESXi host as described in the following section.

Configure GPU Passthrough from VMware ESXi host

Use the following procedure to enable GPU PCIe Passthrough:

1. On the Navigator page, go to the PCI Devices section using the path: Host > Manage > Hardware > PCI Devices.

2. In the list of available PCI devices, select the GPU devices for passthrough using the search option as shown in the following screen: 
   
   

   Note

   This screenshot shows the PCI devices after the GPU passthrough is completed. Therefore, the Passthrough attribute is shown as Active. Initially, the Passthrough attribute of the PCI devices is set to Disabled, as shown in the steps that follow.

1. 

2. To enable the PCI passthrough for the GPU devices, select the corresponding GPU device and select Toggle passthrough, as shown in the following screen: 
   
   

   

   The PCIe device displays a message indicating the change was performed successfully and prompts for a reboot to enable the applied settings. 
   
   

   
   
   

   

3. Repeat the steps to enable PCI passthrough for the remaining GPU devices.

Instantiate the SBC VM

For GPU accelerated solutions, associate the GPU to the SBC VM as described in the following section.

Associate GPU to SBC VM

For GPU accelerated solutions, use the following steps to associate the GPU to the SBC VM.

1. On the Customize Settings screen, select Add other device > PCI device as shown below: 
   
   

   

2. In the New PCI device drop-down option, select the GPU PCI device to associate with the instance. 
   
   

   

Additional VM Settings

Before starting the SBC for ISO installation, configure the following required settings on the SBC instance.

Configure the SBC 

Configure the SBC based on the required call sessions, required cps, and the codec mix.

An example codec mix is shown in the table below:

Activate SWe Traffic Profile

Use the following steps to activate a traffic profile on the GPU SBC.

Create transcode sweCodecMixProfile

Create a codec mix profile for the targeted transcode codec mix.

admin@vsbc1% set system sweCodecMixProfile loadProfile amrwb p20 percentage 15
[ok][2020-06-15 11:48:15]

[edit]
admin@vsbc1% set system sweCodecMixProfile loadProfile g729 p20 percentage 35
[ok][2020-06-15 11:48:33]

[edit]
admin@vsbc1% set system sweCodecMixProfile loadProfile g711 p20 percentage 50
[ok][2020-06-15 11:48:46]

[edit]

admin@vsbc1% commit
Commit complete.
[ok][2020-06-15 11:48:47]

[edit]
admin@vsbc1%

Create traffic profile

Create a custom traffic profile with targeted transcode percentage and associate the transcode codec mix profile.

admin@vsbc1% set system sweTrafficProfiles loadTrafficProfile passthroughCodecProfile G711_20ms transcodePercent 30 transcodingCodecProfile loadProfile callHoldTime 25 useGPUForTranscoding true 
[ok][2020-06-15 11:52:09]

[edit]
admin@vsbc1% commit

Activate the traffic profile

admin@vsbc1% set system sweActiveProfile name loadTrafficProfile
[ok][2020-06-15 11:52:56]

[edit]
admin@vsbc1% commit
The following warnings were generated:
  'system sweActiveProfile': To Activate the Profile system will be rebooted.All active calls will be lost during this process. Do you wish to continue?
Proceed? [yes,no] yes