I'm diving into running a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) setup with GPU acceleration and could use some clarity since I've come across a lot of mixed info. Here's what I've gathered so far:
- It seems like you can run multiple RDS users with GPU acceleration using vGPU, but you need a supported hypervisor such as VMware ESXi, typically along with Horizon for smoother integration.
- If you're going for Windows Server on bare metal, unfortunately, you can't share a GPU across multiple RDS sessions, even if you've installed a Tesla GPU and have a vGPU license.
- To properly utilize vGPU, you need to run Windows Server in a VM. Then, at the hypervisor level, you assign a vGPU profile (like M10-1Q) to that VM. Windows recognizes the vGPU and distributes it across RDS sessions with the right GRID drivers.
My ultimate goal is to set up a dedicated physical server for RDS (whether bare metal or VM) with a Tesla M10 or A2 GPU. I want to configure vGPU profiles so all user sessions can benefit from GPU acceleration for applications like Office, Teams, browsers, etc. However, I haven't found any clear, step-by-step guidance on how to achieve this using plain RDS without Horizon or Citrix. Is it even possible? Any help or shared experiences would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
Last I knew, Windows Remote Desktop only supports its own display driver by default, which overrides your hardware settings for software rendering. You’re correct about needing to use DDA to assign the GPU to a Windows Server VM with RDS installed. And yes, get those special vGPU drivers from NVIDIA, but be warned—they often charge per vGPU, which can feel like you’re paying double for access.
Check this link out! It mentions that Remote Desktop Session Hosts can use either physical or virtual GPUs with the right setup. This definitely implies that using a physical RDSH server should work, especially since hardware GPU support has been around since Server 2016. Just keep in mind the licensing costs from NVIDIA; they do add up!
I checked into this as well, and from what I found, starting with Windows Server 2025, they will allow GPU partitioning, letting you share a GPU device among multiple VMs. That’s exciting and could change the game for setups like yours!
Totally, looks promising! But I worry it might be pushing folks towards AVD or Windows 365 instead of traditional RDS.
Yeah, it's pricey but I've seen it starting to balance out. Testing it on bare metal sounds smart! If your CPU takes a hit, you can always throw the server out the window!