Nvidia Quadro VCA Manager Service manual

NVIDIA Quadro VCA Manager
User's and administrator's guide
NVIDIA Advanced Rendering Center
Fasanenstraße 81
10623 Berlin
Germany
phone [phone]
fax [phone]
arc-offi[email protected]

Copyright Information
©1986,2015 NVIDIA ARC GmbH. All rights reserved.
This document is protected under copyright law. The contents of this document may not be
translated, copied or duplicated in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written
permission of NVIDIA ARC GmbH.
The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. NVIDIA ARC
GmbH and its employees shall not be responsible for incidental or consequential damages
resulting from the use of this material or liable for technical or editorial omissions made
herein.
NVIDIA and the NVIDIA logo are registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. imatter,
IndeX, Iray, mental images, mental ray, and RealityServer are trademarks and/or registered
trademarks of NVIDIA ARC GmbH. Other product names mentioned in this document may
be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby ac-
knowledged.
Document build number 240329
ii VCA Manager Guide ©1986,2015 NVIDIA ARC GmbH

Contents
1Introduction to VCA Manager ......................................... 1
2Connecting to VCA Manager .......................................... 1
3Logging in to VCA Manager .......................................... 2
3.1VCA Manager Login window: Overview ............................. 2
3.2Logging in to VCA Manager: Procedure .............................. 2
4Reserving VCAs .................................................... 3
4.1VCA Manager Overview window: Overview .......................... 3
4.1.1User status .................................................. 4
4.1.2My Visual Computing Cluster .................................. 5
4.1.3Visual Computing Appliance Pool ............................... 7
4.1.4Messages ................................................... 8
4.2VCA Manager Overview window: Procedures ......................... 9
4.2.1Reserving VCAs ............................................. 9
4.2.2Releasing VCAs .............................................. 9
4.2.3Adding and deleting a message ................................. 9
4.2.4Refreshing the VCA connection ................................. 10
4.2.5Changing your password ...................................... 10
4.2.6Logging out ................................................. 10
5Managing the VCA Pool and user access ................................. 11
5.1Adding a user ................................................... 11
5.2Removing a user ................................................. 12
5.3Temporarily disabling VCAs in the pool .............................. 12
5.4Testing Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) connections and performance 13
5.5Setting the message of the day ...................................... 13
5.6Setting the VCA Pool name ........................................ 14
6Warranty and support ................................................ 14
©1986,2015 NVIDIA ARC GmbH VCA Manager Guide iii

1 Introduction to VCA Manager
Purpose: VCA Manager is a pre-installed utility found on a Visual Computing Appliance
(VCA). Use it to:
1Reserve VCAs for your own use
2Start an application on your reserved VCAs
To reserve your VCAs:
1Open VCA Manager from a browser window.
2Select the number of VCAs you want to reserve.
3Select the software application you want to use.
4Submit your request. The system reserves your VCAs for immediate use and starts the
remote server.
At any time, you can change your VCA setup by releasing your current VCAs and reserv-
ing a different setup. Your VCAs are not automatically released when you log off so please
remember to release them when you no longer need them.
Definitions:
Visual Computing Appliance (VCA) is a network appliance with 10GigE and InfiniBand
connections. A VCA harnesses the power of advanced NVIDIA GPUs to provide unpar-
alleled computing performance.
VCA Pool represents the available resources that you can reserve — VCAs and installed
software.
VCA reservation represents the VCAs and software you successfully reserve.
2 Connecting to VCA Manager
From your browser, enter the name or IP address of the VCA you want to connect to. The
format is https://[name or IP address of the VCA].
The VCA Manager login window is displayed if the connection is successful.
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3 Logging in to VCA Manager 3.2 Logging in to VCA Manager: Procedure
3 Logging in to VCA Manager
3.1 VCA Manager Login window: Overview
The VCA Manager login window contains the following input fields and buttons:
VCA Manager Login window
User name: Type your user name. User names are assigned by the administrator of VCA
Manager.
Password: Type your password. Your initial password is assigned by the administrator
of VCA Manager. However, you can change your password at any time. A password can
contain any combination of alphabetic, numeric, and special characters. The maximum
length is 20 characters.
Login: Click this button to submit your user information to the system for validation.
3.2 Logging in to VCA Manager: Procedure
To log in to VCA Manager, type your user name and password and click the Login button.
If you log in successfully, the VCA Manager Overview window is displayed.
If login fails, contact the administrator of VCA Manager.
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4 Reserving VCAs
4 Reserving VCAs
This chapter explains how to reserve VCAs, and a software application such as NVIDIA Iray,
which is designed for efficient use of one or more VCAs.
4.1 VCA Manager Overview window: Overview
The following figure shows the VCA Manager Overview window:
Overview window
Immediately under the page title, a snapshot of the user’s status is provided.
The Overview window itself is divided into three parts or panels:
My Visual Computing Cluster where you reserve the VCAs and software application
you want to use
Visual Computing Appliance Pool which provides an overview of the VCA Pool
Messages where important information about the VCA Pool and its use is posted
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4 Reserving VCAs 4.1 VCA Manager Overview window: Overview
Note
To expand or collapse a panel, select its name or the icon to the far right of the title.
The following sections describe the contents of the Overview window in more detail.
4.1.1 User status
Under the window title, important information about your usage of VCA Manager and any
restrictions about using the VCA Pool are displayed:
Overview window: User status
Welcome: The user name you used to log in
Message of the day: Set by the administrator. This field may be left blank.
Online Users: The names of all users currently logged in.
Cluster Size Limit: The maximum number of VCAs that you can reserve.
Remaining Sessions: The remaining number of reservations that you are allowed.
Logging out: When you hover your mouse over the menu icon on the right, the menu is
displayed. To logout, select the Logout command.
User menu
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4.1 VCA Manager Overview window: Overview 4 Reserving VCAs
Note
Logging out does not release your VCAs
The other commands in the menu support tasks performed by administrators of
VCA Manager
4.1.2 My Visual Computing Cluster
From this panel, you define a VCA reservation and submit it.
My Visual Computing Cluster panel: Before reserving VCAs
Click the Reserve button to submit your request to the system.
Note
After you have successfully reserved your VCAs, a Release All button is displayed.
To change your set up, you must release your VCAs and then submit a new reserva-
tion request.
When reserved, the VCAs change from grey to yellow:
My Visual Computing Cluster panel: VCAs reserved
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4 Reserving VCAs 4.1 VCA Manager Overview window: Overview
If you cannot see the VCAs you reserved, then expand the panel by selecting the title "My
Visual Computing Cluster" or the expand/collapse icon to the right of the title.
Iray users only: After the process for starting Iray is completed, the VCAs change from yellow
to green.
My Visual Computing Cluster panel: VCAs ready
When your reservation is successful, the following fields display information about your
VCAs:
Reserved: The number of VCAs you reserved.
Head Node Cluster IP: The IP address that you copy and paste into your client appli-
cation.
Head Node Admin Page: The IP address for the console, which provides detailed tech-
nical information about your VCAs. This information is intended for debugging, which
is not covered in this document.
Started Software: The application that you started, if any.
Note
If you have not reserved any VCAs or you have released your VCAs, default values are
set to zero or null.
Below these fields, boxes which represent all the VCAs you reserved are displayed. One box
represents one VCA. Above each box is the unique name of the VCA. Underneath is your
user name.
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4.1 VCA Manager Overview window: Overview 4 Reserving VCAs
When you hover over a VCA, system activity information about the VCA is displayed. You
can use this information to check whether or not a VCA is operating correctly.
My Visual Computing Cluster panel: System activity for a VCA
4.1.3 Visual Computing Appliance Pool
This panel displays information about the VCA Pool: which VCAs are free and which are
reserved and by whom.
Visual Computing Appliance Pool panel
The following information is displayed:
Available VCAs: The number of VCAs that are currently free / The total number of
VCAs in the pool
List of all VCA users: A list all users that have reserved VCAs, the number of VCAs
reserved by each person, and the software they are running. To release your VCAs, click
the Xto the right of the Size column. You cannot release the VCAs of other users unless
you have administrator’s privileges.
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