Skip to content

GPU Overview

GPU resource requests are handled slightly differently from what was described in the Projects section. In case you need to request GPUs, the first step is to open a ticket to the GPU Platform Consultancy functional element. The consultants will help you decide which of the services better suits your needs.

Services

OpenStack Project with GPU Flavors

This option is identical to the one described in the Projects section, except that GPU flavors will be assigned to your project. You can then launch instances with GPUs. The available flavors are:

Flavor Name GPU RAM vCPUs Disk Ephemeral Comments
g1.xlarge V100 16 GB 4 56 GB 96 GB -
g1.4xlarge V100 (4x) 64 GB 16 80 GB 528 GB -
g2.xlarge T4 16 GB 4 64 GB 192 GB -
g3.xlarge V100S 16 GB 4 64 GB 192 GB -
g3.4xlarge V100S (4x) 64 GB 16 128 GB 896 GB -
vg1.xlarge T4 (vGPU) 16 GB 4 64 GB 192 GB Specific configuration here

Note: Adequate GPU drivers have to be installed (detailed here).

Container Service Clusters

After having GPU resources allocated to your OpenStack project, you can deploy clusters with GPUs by setting a label (explained here).

Batch Service GPU jobs

The Batch service at CERN already allows the submission of GPU jobs (examples here). Batch not only allows to submit jobs in the typical batch system form, but also using docker, singularity and interactive jobs (including running GUI applications).

VM Configuration

When using GPUs directly in virtual machines you need to handle driver installation and configuration.

Driver Installation

Note: Virtual GPU driver installation is different (see here).

To install NVIDIA drivers, open the CUDA Toolkit Downloads page and select the options related to your system. As an installer type, we recommend choosing the 'network' option. Having selected all options, you will be prompted with a succinct installation instructions box.

As a rule of thumb, you can verify that the drivers have been correctly installed if you can successfully run 'nvidia-smi' in a terminal (Linux) or if you see the GPU model you have assigned in the device manager, under display adapters (Windows).

For more detailed instructions, such as pre- and post-installation actions, see the Installation Guide for Linux or the Installation Guide for Microsoft Windows.

Virtual GPUs

Note: Running Windows is not supported with the current license.

For the vGPUs to operate at full capacity, licensing is required. Licensing can be setup automatically when creating a VM by passing a user data file that we provide (download here). Note that with this user data file, the vGPU drivers are also installed. Example vGPU VM creation command:

$ wget https://clouddocs.web.cern.ch/gpu/vgpu-config.sh
$ openstack server create --user-data vgpu-config.sh --flavor vg1.xlarge --image <LINUX_IMAGE> --key-name <KEY_NAME> <VM_NAME>

Virtual GPU VMs can also be created through the OpenStack dashboard by loading the same user data file in the "Configuration" tab.

GPU accelerated Docker containers

The NVIDIA Container Toolkit is required to run GPU accelerated Docker containers (not required for Kubernetes). Installation instructions are available here.

Additional resources: