I want to make use of hardware acceleration for decoding an h264 encoded MP4 file. However, since I am using Mac OS, I cannot use Intel quick sync video which only supports Linux and Windows.
Does Virtualbox support Intel Quick Sync Video? If I install a guest Linux distribution in Virtualbox, does Intel quick sync video work?
Quick Sync is Intel's technology, but I think you are interested in GPU virtualization support in VirtualBox. Also it depends from your system hardware whether it is possible to use GPU virtualization, your system needs to support VT-d or GVT-D and your virtualization software need to support GPU passthrough on the other hand.
Qemu, Xen and VMWar should support VT-d, and as far as I know Virtualbox does not support it yet.
Related
How do I enable CPU hot add and Remove for this virtual machine option?Are they any OS specific configuration required or NUMA architecture is required?
Yes, It is specific.
Linux: Newer Linux kernels have support for CPU hot add and CPU hot remove. To verify this, check the documentation for your Linux distribution in the documentation directory of the distribution source code. The documentation contains directions for special boot time switches related to CPU Hot Plug, as well as how to dynamically bring CPUs on and offline.
Windows: Windows Server 2012 (Standard and Datacenter Edition) and Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition support CPU hot add, but not CPU hot remove.
Note: Windows Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise Editions do not support CPU hot add.
Check and conform the virtual machine's are using hardware version 7 or later.
For information regarding hot add Refer this links.
VMware KB
Hot Plug Settings
Today I got setup with AWS GPU G2 instance (g2.2xlarge). I wanted to test out the 3d hardware capability that is offered as mentioned here
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
Features:
High Frequency Intel Xeon E5-2670 (Sandy Bridge) Processors
High-performance NVIDIA GPU with 1,536 CUDA cores and 4GB of video
memory On-board hardware video encoder designed to support up to eight
real-time HD video streams (720p#30fps) or up to four real-time FHD
video streams (1080p at 30 fps). Support for low-latency frame capture
and encoding for either the full operating system or select render
targets, enabling high-quality interactive streaming experiences.
But when I tried running 3dmark 2011 to try things out. I got an exception "No DXGI adapters found"
Also I noticed, dxdiag says no hardware acceleration available.
So im a bit puzzled as to why I dont see the NVIDIA GPU with 1500+ cuda cores.
Also, It would be great if Azure offered 3d compute capabilities.
To answer my own question, there is some setup required before GPU can be used. One needs to install nvidia grid k520 driver as well as the latest cuda toolkit. Finally install vnc server on the instance and then open relevant ports in the aws instance. Then install vnc client on your local pc and that should give you access to the gpu.
Thanks
I couldn´t find any information on the documentation of VMware about this topic. Any advise on where to find information on this is very appreciated.
VMware workstation, fusion and player are desktop productions that run on top of other operating systems like windows, linux and mac os. VMware ESX, ESXi run on bare metal directly. Since VMware Infrastructure 3 is built upon ESX and ESXi 3.X, it is ok for you to run workstation on top of VI3. But it should be pointed out that workstation running on VI3 won't support hardware virtualization even if your physical cpu ships with hardware virtualization solution. However, latest ESXi and even workstation support so called "nested virtualization" in non-production environment. Actually, I have a virtual ESXi 5 server that runs within my fusion 5.
Assuming that you mean that you want to run a virtualization solution (VMware Workstation) on top of another virtualization solution (VMware Infrastructure), although I'm not sure why you would want to do that instead of simply using a single virtualization solution (either Infrastructure or Workstation, depending on what your needs/goals are), I don't believe that it's blocked. To VMware Infrastructure, the guest OS that you're running Workstation on should just look like any other guest OS, albeit one that's probably using a lot of resources.
You might find someone else who is trying to accomplish the same thing in the Workstation community.
I am planning to use VMWare workstation for installing linux. But my use case is to have multiple kernel versions as part of development requirement.
Does VMWare allow use of this?
I mean will GRUB or loader prompt me for loading of kernel of my choice the way which it will do on actual system ?
Thanks, kedar
Yes, it will allow this. Linux does not care if it is running in a VM or on real hardware. As far as Linux knows (except for the VMWare tools, of course), it is running on real hardware.
The VM "disk" is just a file on the host file system so can be set up independently of that host file system, including boot loaders and such.
Vmware workstation mimics a true hardware installation very well, almost everything you can do in a physical box you can do in a virtual machine. It's not perfect but it is pretty close to it. I use a 2 physical machine setup to mimic a 10 machine domain lab. The ability to save snapshots or to pause a machine makes it better than a physical machine in some respects.
It is a great tool and one that I recommend for anyone learning IT
we are setting up new QE testing server. I guess host OS will be win2008
Which vmware server to choose - 1.x or 2.x ?
A year ago I tried vmware 1 server with Win2008 and it did not work at all.
However, Vmware server 2 did not seem to have the handy vmware console
VMware Server Console\vmware.exe
(is the new vmware server2 still just web based?)
we have a lot of vmware 1 images, are these ok for v2?
Or is it just better to go with HyperV?
Hyper-V Server or ESXi would probably be the best performing and most trouble free options - ie virtualisation not really dependant on the host operating system (but still free).
You can use tools like Vmdk2Vhd to convert image files. Be aware that you should boot the image in its old format first and uninstall vmware tools and some drivers like specific disk controller drivers (as per the instructions of the tool) before you convert it.
Going the enterprise route the System Center Virtual Machine Manager can do this mostly automatically, but then it's not a free solution anymore :) This platform can of course also do physical to virtual migrations for you...
...but alas, you can prepare a physical machine the same way as before converting a vmware image and then use normal imaging tools to clone it into a virtual machine. Or you can use Vmware's free converter tool and then convert the resulting vmdk image to vhd :)
Vmware Server v2 can use v1 images. Windows Server 2008 is supported only in v2. v2 also includes the Virtual Infrastructure Client which you can use instead of the web access ( the client replaces the old console from v1). This is the same client that is used with ESX.
vmware 2.0 crashed regularly on one server I have - however, hasn't crashed since the recent 2.0.1 update (but its only been a week).
I have w2K8 running under vmware 1.0.9 - by selecting Vista (experimental) as the OS setting. However, it's not under any load yet.
I'd recommend ESXi over VMware Server (you can migrate the images) purely for performance reasons. Server 2008 and Vista both run abysmally under VMware Server from my experience. With ESXi and a decent hardware RAID setup, things can be a bit more bearable.