PPro CC on Nvidia VCA (Visual Computing Appliance)

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Zhang Junhao] “Any reply is appreciated. Much more so if you’re a VCA vendor, Video I/O manufacturer or from Adobe.”

None of that – but had the honor of participating in a tech talk with NVidia VCA people at NAB.

Something to keep in mind: VCA is a GPU virtualization platform, nothing more, nothing less. CPU-intensive workflows as well as those placing high demands on things other than GPU (CPU, failover, storage bandwidth, resolutions higher than 1080p, etc.) – should look elsewhere. VCA is supposed to deliver GPU accelerated workflows to remote users primarily, simplifying deployment, support, access to data. Does not replace high performance desktops – but does deliver decent GPU acceleration to laptops, underpowered desktops, possibly even tablets.

Another huge benefit: assets, hardware, storage – all on one place, behind a glass door (hopefully), with a smart-looking short-haired Russian-accented geek (me) staring at it. A boon for enterprise deployment, support, security.

1. Correct.

2. Correct.

3. Pre-allocated (as of NAB 2013).

4. Yes there’re limitations especially that there’s no fiber or SAS on a VCA, just 10GigE (again, as of 4/13). As always, calculate demand and deploy accordingly.

5. No.

6. Don’t know. It seemed hypervisor and VM settings weren’t highly adjustable, to ease NVidia support headaches.

7. Don’t think VCA supports failover clustering. Other than that – through redundant virtualized storage and a 2nd VCA on the ready.

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Ankit Patel]

Hi Zhang,

Please let me first comment on this statement “Adobe is promoting collaborative editing with Anywhere but I am curious about the following: [and all your questions are about GRID VCA]”

GRID VCA and Adobe Anywhere are two different products. Both take advantage of NVIDIA GPUs but they work differently and solve different problems.

Adobe Anywhere is designed for video workflow collaboration. With Anywhere you run Premiere Pro, After Effects and Prelude on both the server and the client machine. The software dynamically decides where to do the processing (either server or client). Moreover Anywhere has a host of collaboration features.

GRID VCA is an appliance designed to deliver GPU accelerated applications with the benefits of virtualization. (as Alex noted). With VCA the software that you want to run is only installed and run on the VCA, all processing is done on the VCA. The display is encoded and sent to a tiny client application that decodes the display stream.

Alex is correct with all of his answers and specifically about the virtualization benefits such as security, deployment management, etc… however let me add some additional information.

If all 8 users are maxing out the CPU then yes the VCA is a bad fit for that workflow. 8 Quadro Workstations may be a better fit. However if the CPU usage is mixed then VCA may work. Let me explain how it works and you can decide if it fits for your workflow. There are a total of 32 cores (hyper-threaded) on the VCA and each user is allocated 8 virtual CPU cores. What this means is that on average everyone gets 4 CPU cores. Occasionally, if one of the users needs more CPU power they can use up to 8 cores the other users will be left sharing the remaining cores. In the case of GPUs and memory the resources are dedicated to the user so that each user gets 30GB of memory and a dedicated Quadro K5000-class GPU.

As for the storage system, yes multiple layers, multiple users, low compression all puts pressure on the storage system. Again this is a load balancing problem and the actual required bandwidth depends on usage. The VCA provides two 10GigE connections and expects you to connect to a NAS. We have recently added a small amount of local storage within the appliance, 60GB, which is a shared scratch space. This scratch space can be used to save your current project and offload the storage system but is not intended to replace a NAS.

Video I/O cards do not work.

VCA has a homogeneous user model. All users are equal. Everyone gets the exact same system resources so there is no per user optimization.

On the single point of failure, VCA does have some internal redundancy such as redundant power supplies and software redundancy so that if one of the 8 virtual machines goes down the remaining 7 continue to work. However of the entire system goes down then the only solution is to replace the unit.

I hope this helps you understand the VCA better so that you can choose the product that best addresses the problems you are trying to solve. GRID VCA, Adobe Anywhere or Quadro based workstations.

Kind regards,
Ankit Patel
Sr. Product Manager – GRID VCA

[Zhang Junhao]

Thanks Alex and Ankit for the valuable answers 🙂

Not the kind of answers I like to hear but I guess if things sound too good to be true, they usually are, at least at this juncture.

The lack of I/O support is the biggest bummer to me here.

And I don’t suppose VCA supports dual monitors which is a common setup in the industry ?

btw Ankit, are you from Nvidia ?