Passthrough a consumer Gefore and Quadro GPU to a VM with VMware and using RDP
Because this required a lot of configuration steps I decided to create a vlog instead of a blog. So watch the video here:
I’m using VMware vSphere and vCenter 6.7 and Windows Sever 2019.
I hope this was informative. For questions or comments you can always give a reaction in the comment section or contact me:
Nice one Chris!
Hi Chris, i am stumped that this process is so easy for you. I tryed this several times and only succeeded with original Grid cards and self made Grid cards (GTX670 with hardware modifications). I tryed consumer cards (GTX660ti and GTX1050ti) and never got them to work at all. I essentially did the same as you did and that gives me error 43 when the nVidia driver is installed. It is essentially refusing to load the driver due to the restriction nVidia is putting in the consumer drivers. I also tryed to put pciHole settings in the VM to facilitate the bigger GPU memory on the GTX660ti an GTX1050ti but that only made the VM instable and broke RDP with or without the GPU passed trough. That was the first VM setting ever that i did see that breaks things in the guest OS.
Any idea why i and many other have so much more trouble to get passtrough working for GPU’s? I have to say that most other hardware poses no problem at all in passtrough, i tryed com ports/printer ports/usb ports/raid controllers they all work without any special setting at all.
Hi Leon,
Wow that’s strange for me everything worked simple like I did in the video. I did have to play around with RD local policy to get it to work on my first VM. Hope you figure it out.
Do you boot your VM with the GPU in legacy so with MDR partitions or in UEFI with GTP? Also how is the bios of your host configured legacy/UEFI and in the bios of the host is there any setting set that allows PCI mapping above 4GB ? Because i think it has something to do with how MMIO is handled by ESX. I f this is the case settings of the host are as important as settings of the guest OS.
I will check as soon as I’m back from the E2EVC 😉
I did forget another one, in the bios you can set the primary GPU to be PCIe or other (the definition of other depends on the motherboard chipset/CPU). Because ESX initializes all GPU on startup this might be a thing although i am not sure about this one because a reset of the device later when the VM takes over should be enough to get things working depending on the qualty of the driver. Seen things go wrong with GPU’s not acting correct on a reset when a machine continues on a resume (laptops never seem to go wrong but seen several desktops doing this wrong and there are tools that can trigger a reset used by ppl who build media centers.
Hi Leon,
I checked the settings the are :
Guest OS = Windows
Guest OS version = Windows 2016
Bios Firmware = BIOS
In the bios no settings about PCI mapping.
You are great, thank you. A question if I may…
Using VMWare, is it possible to configure a host GPU as a pass-through device for “more than one” guest VMs?
And, is it possible to use these guest VMs and the very same pass-through GPU, remotely and/or locally at the same time?
No that’s not possible with pass trough. That is only possible with virtual GPU like Nvidia GRID.
Hi Chris,
In another topic if I may.
Once I added the passthru pci, I am no longer able to access the edit settings section on the VM. I tried everything, rebooting changing back to disable the GPU from “manage” on the host, but nothing helps (only if I manually removes it from the .vmx file.
Is there a known issue regarding this?
Thanks!
Didi
Hi, can ı virtualization Quadro m4000? Thank you
Hi
Is very good
But I have error 43 in k4000 Quadro vga
Please Help me
Thank you for this, was struggling to put my P620 passingthrough to a windows 2016 VM.
The trick to add the Cpu setting in advanced to FALSE made it.
I guess Nvidia is kind of blocking the driver on Virtual Machines.
I think this kind hides to the driver it is running on a VM.
thank you again, chris, great info!.