This is a quick post for my VMworld 2021 vBrownbag session VMTN2835. This session covers updates to the VDI by day compute by night scripts that I’ve been writing and updating for a couple of years. You can download all of the modules needed for this from my GitHub repo. The session is airs at 2:15 PM Central Time on October 5th.
You can download the slide deck here or by clicking on he picture above. The demo of how the scripts work is part of the session. To watch the session, please sign up for VMworld and you can catch it on replay if you missed the live session.
UPDATE: A little while after VMworld the vBrownbag team posts the videos up to their YouTube channel. You can now watch the video below.
Some may ask why this collection of modules isn’t bundled up as a single set of scripts. I’ve done it this way because they can be used independently of the rest of the scripts. For example you may want to gather profile information about the GPUs in your hosts, or you may want to determine the carrying capacity of your hosts. Both of these can be done done with the scripts independently and don’t require the entire VDI by day set of scripts.
There are a several changes to the script that I talk about in the session. To quickly recap those for you, they are:
- Support for the NVIDIA Ampere line of GPUs – A100, A40, and A10, the A16 will follow shortly after GA
- A new module that gathers supported vGPU profiles from the environment instead of relying on a hard coded list
- A lot of new parameter updates to be compatible with vSphere 7.0 U2
- The view commands no longer support multiple hosts states
- The default host states have been changed to “Connected” only
- Work has been done to change from using the get-VMhost command
Looking at that list you can probably guess the next two items that will be changing soon for these scripts. First we will be changing to a get-View command to speed things up, especially for larger environments. The other one is to support the A16 GPU when it GAs. Though it is worth noting that, it’s not a good candidate for VDI by day compute by night because it’s optimized more for VDI than AI/ML. This is not unlike the A100 & A30 which can’t be used to drive graphics in VDI. The optimum card for most will be the A40.
For the rest of whats been updated be sure to catch VMTN2835. I hope you have a great VMworld, any feedback on these modules is greatly appreciated.
May your servers keep running and your data center always be chilled.
