If you’re like me and use an older Nvidia GRID K1 or K2 vGPU video card for your VDI homelab, you may notice that when using VMware Horizon that VMware Blast h264 encoding is no longer being offloaded to the GPU and is instead being encoded via the CPU.
Originally when an environment was configured with an Nvidia GRID K1 or K2 card, not only does the card provide 3D acceleration and rendering, but it also offloads the VMware BLAST h264 stream (the visual session) so that the CPU doesn’t have to. This results in less CPU usage and provides a streamlined experience for the user.
This functionality was handled via NVFBC (Nvidia Frame Buffer Capture) which was part of the Nvidia Capture SDK (formerly known as GRID SDK). This function allowed the video card to capture the video frame buffer and encode it using NVENC (Nvidia Encoder).
Ultimately after spending hours troubleshooting, I learned that NVFBC has been deprecated and is no longer support, hence why it’s no longer functioning. I also checked and noticed that tools (such as nvfbcenable) were no longer bundled with the VMware Horizon agent. One can assume that the agent doesn’t even attempt to check or use this function.
Before I was aware of this, I noticed that while 3D Acceleration and graphics were functioning, I was experiencing high CPU usage. Upon further investigation I noticed that my VMware BLAST sessions were not offloading h264 encoding to the video card.
You’ll notice above that under the “Encoder” section, the “Encoder Name” was listed as “h264 4:2:0”. Normally this would say “NVIDIA NvEnc H264” (or “NVIDIA NvEnc HEVC” on newer cards) if it was being offloaded to the GPU.
Looking at a VMware Blast session (Blast-Worker-SessionId1.log), the following lines can be seen.
[INFO ] 0x1f34 bora::Log: NvEnc: VNCEncodeRegionNvEncLoadLibrary: Loaded NVIDIA SDK shared library "nvEncodeAPI64.dll" [INFO ] 0x1f34 bora::Log: NvEnc: VNCEncodeRegionNvEncLoadLibrary: Loaded NVIDIA SDK shared library "nvml.dll" [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetEncoderCapacity: 127 [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetProcessUtilization: 127 [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetGridLicensableFeatures: 127 [INFO ] 0x1f34 bora::Log: NvEnc: VNCEncodeRegionNvEncLoadLibrary: Some NVIDIA nvml functions unavailable, unloading [INFO ] 0x1f34 bora::Log: NvEnc: VNCEncodeRegionNvEncUnloadLibrary: Unloading NVIDIA SDK shared library "nvEncodeAPI64.dll" [INFO ] 0x1f34 bora::Log: NvEnc: VNCEncodeRegionNvEncUnloadLibrary: Unloading NVIDIA SDK shared library "nvml.dll" [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetEncoderCapacity: 127 [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetProcessUtilization: 127 [WARN ] 0x1f34 bora::Warning: GetProcAddress: Failed to resolve nvmlDeviceGetGridLicensableFeatures: 127
You’ll notice it tries to load the proper functions, however it fails.
Unfortunately the only solution is to upgrade to newer or different hardware.
The GRID K1 and GRID K2 cards have reached their EOL (End of Life) and are no longer support. The drivers are not being maintained or updated so I doubt they will take advantage of the newer frame buffer capture functions of Windows 10.
Newer hardware and solutions have incorporated this change and use a different means of frame buffer capture.
To resolve this in my own homelab, I plan to migrate to an AMD FirePro S7150x2.
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Bummer, I just came into possession of a couple of Grid K1 cards. I was hoping to use them for video encoding and to transcode video. To bad someone can't make software to take advantage of all this power. A parallel use of RAM and GPU should be able to really push that process.
Hi Craig,
You should be able to use them for the purpose your described.
This post refers to h264 encoding for VMware Horizon sessions, and not video transcoding or encoding.
Cheers
Stephen
Hi!
I have come into K1 card and I found that PLX 8747 bridge has 2.5GT/s x8 links to GPU chips (GK107GL), while it has 8GT/s x16 to CPU. Is it normal? I doubt that.
root@kvm2:~# lspci -tv | grep -i nvidia
+-02.0-[02-07]----00.0-[03-07]--+-08.0-[04]----00.0 NVIDIA Corporation GK107GL [GRID K1]
| +-09.0-[05]----00.0 NVIDIA Corporation GK107GL [GRID K1]
| +-10.0-[06]----00.0 NVIDIA Corporation GK107GL [GRID K1]
| \-11.0-[07]----00.0 NVIDIA Corporation GK107GL [GRID K1]
root@kvm2:~# lspci -d 10b5: -vvv | grep "PLX\|LnkSta:"
02:00.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ca) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
LnkSta: Speed 8GT/s, Width x16, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt-
Capabilities: [a4] Subsystem: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch
03:08.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ca) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x8, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive+ BWMgmt+ ABWMgmt+
Capabilities: [a4] Subsystem: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch
03:09.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ca) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x8, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive+ BWMgmt+ ABWMgmt+
Capabilities: [a4] Subsystem: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch
03:10.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ca) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x8, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive+ BWMgmt+ ABWMgmt+
Capabilities: [a4] Subsystem: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch
03:11.0 PCI bridge: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch (rev ca) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x8, TrErr- Train- SlotClk- DLActive+ BWMgmt+ ABWMgmt+
Capabilities: [a4] Subsystem: PLX Technology, Inc. PEX 8747 48-Lane, 5-Port PCI Express Gen 3 (8.0 GT/s) Switch
Thank you!
Best,
Alex
It turns out that it's a normal behavior of the GPU. Under load the speed of the PCIe links it raised to 8GT/s.
Thanks for posting and letting us know Alex!
will it work with old version of vmware horizon / nvidia driver / windows 10
vmware horizon: 7.8
horizon client: 5.3
windows 10 1903
nvidia driver: 367.130 / 370.35
But it's not work.
Don't know my misktake or anything? Can you try?
Hey there,
Unfortunately I can't try in my environment, but you might have to go further back to both an earlier version of the Horizon agent, and you also probably need an earlier version of Windows 10 (and the Nvidia driver).
So do you still using nvidia nvenc in your environment?
I have using old version of all componment in my environment. I'll try again.
No, unfortunately since the Horizon agent removed the nvenc ability, I no longer use it. Right now all the h264 encoding is handled by the CPU, however I still have 3D accelerated graphics.
In order to get it working, you'll need an older NVidia Grid Driver, an older Windows 10 instance, and an older VMware Horizon agent.
I just came across this post before clicking buy on ebay and am glad I did. I was going to be using the card for transcoding, which would have done me zero good.
To the Roy. Just in case you don't understand what Horizon is. Horizon is software for VDI. The graphic card itself is working just fine for transcoding