OpenGL support for Vmware ESXi

[prowessinc]

Hello,

I'm currently evaluating the VMware ESXi to see if it can run our software.  VMware ESXi is great but we have issue with graphics.  Our software required OpenGL 1.1 compatible graphics card and I know that VMware ESXi uses the Microsoft Standard graphic driver.  Is there anyway that I can make the VMware ESXi to support the full OpenGL for our software to run smoothly?  Any help and answer are very appreciated.  Thank you.

[RDPetruska]

Thread moved to ESXi 5 forum.

[prowessinc]

Thank you RDPetruska.

[RParker]

prowessinc wrote:

Hello,

I'm currently evaluating the VMware ESXi to see if it can run our software.  VMware ESXi is great but we have issue with graphics.  Our software required OpenGL 1.1 compatible graphics card and I know that VMware ESXi uses the Microsoft Standard graphic driver.  Is there anyway that I can make the VMware ESXi to support the full OpenGL for our software to run smoothly?  Any help and answer are very appreciated.  Thank you.

It's not the graphic card, your software may require a driver on a hardware machine, but when you look at the machine from a console, that is different.  If you remote into that machine, you don't need a video card at all... since it is a remote session.  So you are confusing virtual machines with requirements for physical machines.

OpenGL is old.. everyone is using DirectX these days anyway, time to update that software requirement.. What software is it?

[prowessinc]

RParker, thank you for your reply.  The company i worked for develop software for radiation oncology.  Your are correct. Our software has been based on drivers from the physical machine's installed graphic card from ATI cheap set.  I have evaluated Citrix, VirtualBox, Microsoft, and VMware.  Microsoft and VMware are the only product that close to support our security feature but now we come across issue having VMware supporting the video driver.  Our software provide 3D viewing and other features that it required video card drivers with OpenGL.  The standard video card driver provided by VMware still works but our 3D view have big issue with refreshing rate.  It will take our engineer years to redesign the software to make full support with VMware.  I was wondering if there is any other way to make it work.  The remote session is not the issue for us.  We want to support our software in to new level in Virtual Machine so our customer can save cost on hardware and use our software more efficiently.  Our software might need to take new route and redevelop to support differently on 3D graphic for Virtual Machine.

[chriswahl]

You might try the wddm video driver. I typically don't consider ESXi a good candidate for multimedia workloads, it's just not designed for that purpose.

[mcowger]

People that recommend changing from OpenGL to DirectX because its 'old' are silly.  There are quite a few primitves in OGL that dont exist in Dx.  Its not an option to just change it, Richard.

prowessinc: Software that requires specific hardware or direct access to hardware (e.g. OpenGL, DirectX, Fax Cards, etc) are generally not currently good candidates for virtualization.  There are ways to force a specific video card to be visible to the VM, but even then it wont display over the network like you want, and it isn't supported.

Honestly, I'd recommend against virtualizing this workload.  If you really want to virtualize it, put it on a regular desktop w/ decent card running Workstation 8 (which has decent passthru support).

[npross]

OpenGL is not "old".  Obviously you've drunk the Microsoft KoolAid.  OpenGL is cross platform. OpenGL in many cases is actually faster than directX and brings newer features to market quicker than DirectX. And actually has a standard and isn't controlled by a monopoly.  Not to mention that 99% of the mobile market uses OpenGL ES for 3D game development (the 1% left over is windows mobile development)

But all this is beside the point.  Can OpenGL (at least 2.1) be virtualized for multiple VMs on ESXi?  I cannot find this answered definitively anywhere.

There are lots of reasons for virtualizing graphics software.  Not all of it depends on raw speed or interactive game playing, yes I know I can do passthru with a windows host but I need to package software to run on a hypervisor.  The software require hardware acceleration, emulation just doesn't cut it.

It confuses me why this is so difficult. At its heart OpenGL is a client server architecture.  It should be easy to virtualize.

[KosmicSuture]

I ran across this while trying to find my own solution.  It would had been nice if this had been answered.  I'm trying to create VMs to replace computers for family (and use cheap tablets or notebooks to access the VMs.

Games that require OpenGL (like Minecraft), won't work without OpenGL drivers.  OpenGL is a graphics API that allows the program to tell the graphics card how to render shapes.  Even in a virtualized environment, you need that graphics layer to do the rendering, and if the program is written to use OpenGL, you either find an OpenGL driver, or you can't run that application.  There is no substituting for DX or anything like that without asking the developer to rewrite his entire graphics engine for a new API.  It ain't gonna happen.

Thus, if anyone uses applications for OpenGL, they need this driver for VMware.

[JarryG]

imho esxi is not the right choice if you want to virtualise desktops and need 3d gfx, because esxi itself does not support graphic cards with acceleration. There is no such a thing as amd/ati or nvidia graphic driver for esxi. And it should stay that way, because gfx-drivers would make esxi unstable. Saying that, any 3d offered by esxi for VM is pure software emulation.

If someone needs virtual machine with quite good 3d-acceleration support, then VMware Workstation or VirtualBox is better choice. Those are not supervisors, but virtualisation platforms sitting on the top of common OS, and can utilise 3d-graphics of host system. Some time ago I made a few tests, and it looks very promising. I was able to run older versions of 3dmark in VM, some games (up to dx8), and even 3d cae software.

[Kurt Daverman]

Beginning in ESXi 5.1, VMware supports hardware accelerated graphics with select NVIDIA GPUs.  Earlier ESXi 5.0 added support for 3d graphics with software renderer.  You can even VMotion running 3d applications between systems regardless if they have a GPU.

Assuming you have NVIDIA GPU on compatible ESXi system, you can install ESXi driver such as NVIDIA DRIVERS 304.76.  And yes, these systems are capable of running 3d VDI workloads for months at a time, so they are stable.

[KosmicSuture]

Thanks, krd, great suggestion, I'll look into that.

JarryG, I know you don't find my solution optimal, but I'm running from a system that I built out of servers that an employer let me hijack from recycling.  My goal for my home system is to have all my major computer equipment housed in one rack in my basement.

I am trying an experiment with giving all the kids tablets with wireless keyboard and mouse and a Windows VM and moving towards a cloud infrastructure (View and other VMWare technologies are coming, but I'm starting slow).  Anything that the kids need Windows for, they can log into the VM for.  None of my kids is into graphics intensive games, just Minecraft and Roblox, and sometimes WoW.  The ESX servers I'm running the VMs from are 8 core 3.2 ghz systems that can spare a lot of clock cycles for software rendering if needed.

Setting up desktop systems just for giving graphics to desktops defeats the design of my "home datacenter", but if I can get some GPU cards either as PCI or Mezzo cards in my BL360 servers and follow krd's suggestion, that might work perfectly.