Citrix has announced that in XenServer 7.3, XenMotion now supports NVIDIA GPU-enabled VMs is now available as an experimental feature of XenServer 7.3, and NVIDIA is now conducting a technical preview with a select group of Citrix customers.

Available starting now as a tech preview to select customers, XenMotion includes the ability to migrate live, NVIDIA GPU-accelerated VMs with no impact to the user. This allows IT to perform critical services like workload leveling, infrastructure resilience and the upgrade of server software, without any VM downtime. This is especially important in today’s 24/7 world, where hourly costs of downtime for enterprises exceeds $300,000 on average, with some industries such as financial services standing to lose $1 million or more, according to ITIC.

Doing Live migration which is to move a VM from one host to another while the VM is still running, has been around for years. But it has not been possible to live migrate a VM that included GPU acceleration technology such as Nvidia vGPU.

XenMotion is now capable of live migrating a GPU-enabled VM on XenServer. Using the Citrix Director management console, administrators can monitor and migrate these VMs. They simply select the VM and from a drop-down menu choose the host they want to move it to. XenMotion with vGPUs is available now as a tech preview for select customers, and Nvidia did not disclose a planned date for general availability.

If a user needs more GPU power all of a sudden, IT can migrate his or her desktop VM to a different server that has more GPU resources available. XenMotion of NVIDIA GPU-accelerated VMs can help you improve end-user experience and VM performance by enabling redistribution of VMs as hosts’ resources become strained. It also improves flexibility by minimizing scheduled downtime (no need to shut down VMs when you need to maintain the underlying hardware) and reducing disruption during unexpected maintenance.

“In today’s 24/7/365 world, every minute of downtime and user disruption can cost organizations thousands of dollars and lost productivity,“ says Anne Hecht, Sr. Director Product Marketing for NVIDIA virtual GPU solutions. “With live migration of NVIDIA GPU-accelerated VMs on Citrix XenServer coupled with vGPU monitoring in Citrix Director, IT will have the tools necessary to proactively manage, ensure timely response, and deliver high availability and a quality user experience. We’re thrilled to be starting the tech. preview of this vital capability and moving one stop closer to general availability.”

In addition, XenServer 7.3 also supports NVIDIA’s latest Pascal GPUs, delivering up to a 2x increase in graphics performance, and supporting up to 50% more users per physical GPU.

Finally, on another NVIDIA GPU-related note, XenDesktop 7.16 is the first desktop virtualization platform to enable H.265 encoding/decoding – the industry’s latest protocol to accelerate video processing which can reduce bandwidth usage by up to 40%, while continuing to provide the best possible user experience. There are definitely good reasons to consider GPU virtualization solutions!

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