VMware vSphere with Tanzu

VMware vSphere with Tanzu is used to transform vSphere to a platform for running Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer. When enabled on a vSphere cluster, vSphere with Tanzu provides the capability to run Kubernetes workloads directly on ESXi hosts and to create upstream Kubernetes clusters within dedicated resource pools.  Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is an enterprise ready Kubernetes runtime built to run consistently with any app on any cloud. It runs the same Kubernetes workloads across the data center, public cloud, and edge for a consistent, secure experience for on-demand access and to keep your workloads properly isolated and secure.

Graphics Processing Units

Graphics processing units (GPU) are dedicated parallel hardware accelerators originally designed for accelerating graphics intensive processing. Today, GPUs have become an essential part of artificial intelligence workloads, especially machine learning and deep learning. Moreover, containers help organizations modernize applications and to align closely with current business needs (see Consolidate your VMs and Modernize Aging Environments with PowerEdge MX750c Compute Sleds and VMware Tanzu). It is only logical to empower container-based applications and workloads to leverage any accelerators that the hardware infrastructure can provide.

As investments in artificial intelligence grow, and organizations explore using AI workloads for critical business workloads, VMware vSphere with Tanzu containerized environments provide the ability to rapidly deploy applications. Although generic applications do well with standard containers, computationally demanding workloads can benefit tremendously with GPU accelerators that can help process multiple computations concurrently. VMware Tanzu Kubernetes on NVIDIA GPUs enables enterprises to adopt and deploy artificial intelligence workloads, such as machine learning and deep learning.

NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units

The NVIDIA Ampere A100 is a powerful graphics processing unit (GPU). The A100 Tensor Core GPU runs diverse compute intensive applications at every scale running in modern cloud data centers. Some compute-intensive applications include AI deep learning (DL) training and inference, data analytics, scientific computing, genomics, edge video analytics and 5G services, graphics rendering, cloud gaming, and many more. Using NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate container workload performance is the key to rapid scalability and superior performance of containers with GPUs.

NVIDIA GPUs with their simultaneous processing capabilities, supported by thousands of cores, help accelerate a wide range of applications across industry segments such as:

• HPC: Deep Learning, Defense, Weather Forecasting, Bioscience research
• Consumer Applications: Transportation, Video Editing, 3D Graphics, Machine Learning
• Entertainment: Gaming, Visual Effects
• Automotive Sectors: Visual Data, Sensors, Automation
• Finance: Analytics, Security-Fraud Detection

Testing the benefits of workloads on containers with GPU acceleration

In this study, we used ResNet-50—a deep learning image classification workload—on a Dell PowerEdge R750 server with an NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU running VMware vSphere with Tanzu. NVIDIA vGPU software “creates virtual GPUs that can be shared across multiple virtual machines, accessed by any device, anywhere”. Companies can use NVIDIA vGPU software for a wide range of workloads. This approach combines the management and security benefits of virtualization with the performance of GPUs, from which many modern workloads can benefit. The results show that the PowerEdge R750 with an NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU in a VMware Tanzu Kubernetes environment with GPU virtualization can support flexibly apportioning GPU compute capability across multiple machine learning workloads in VMware Tanzu Kubernetes clusters.

Dell PowerEdge servers

Modern data centers require fast, flexible cloud enabled infrastructure to respond to complex compute demands. Dell PowerEdge servers provide a scalable business architecture, intelligent automation, and integrated security for workloads from traditional applications and virtualization to cloud-native workloads. The Dell PowerEdge difference is that we deliver the same user experience, and the same integrated management experience across all our servers, so you have one way to patch, manage, update, refresh, and retire servers across the entire data center. PowerEdge servers also incorporate the embedded efficiencies of OpenManage systems management that enable IT pros to focus more time on strategic business objectives and less time on routine IT tasks.

Dell PowerEdge R750

The Dell PowerEdge R750, powered by 3rd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, is a rack server that optimizes application performance and acceleration. The R750 is a dual-socket 2U rack server that delivers outstanding performance for the most demanding workloads. It supports eight channels of memory per CPU, and up to 32 DDR4 DIMMs at 3200 MT/s speeds. In addition, to address substantial throughput improvements, the PowerEdge R750 supports PCIe Gen 4 and up to 24 NVMe drives with improved air-cooling features and optional Direct Liquid Cooling to support increasing power and thermal requirements. These features make the R750 an ideal server for data center standardization on a wide range of workloads, including database and analytics, high performance computing (HPC), traditional corporate IT, virtual desktop infrastructure, and AI/ML environments that require performance, extensive storage, with Data Processing Unit (DPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) support.

References

• Read the Report
• Review the Science
• See the Infographic

About the author: Thomas MM works in the technical marketing team that focuses on Dell PowerEdge with VMware software. With vast experience in the IT industry in various roles, Thomas specializes in PowerEdge servers and VMware software and works to create technical collateral that highlights the many unique benefits of running VMware software on PowerEdge servers for Dell and VMware customers and partners.