NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software

NVIDIA AI Enterprise 2.0 or later

The NVIDIA driver is the software driver that is installed on the OS and is responsible for communicating with the NVIDIA GPU.

NVIDIA AI Enterprise drivers are available by either downloading them from the NVIDIA Enterprise Licensing Portal, the NVIDIA Download Drivers web page, or pulling them from NGC Catalog. Please review the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Quick Start Guide for more details regarding licensing entitlement certificates.

To access the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Host Software (VIB) and NVIDIA vGPU Guest Driver, you must first download and install NGC Catalog CLI. After the NGC Catalog CLI is installed, you will need to launch a command window and running the following commands to download software.

To install NGC Catalog CLI:

1. Enter the NVIDIA NGC website as a guest user.

2. In the top right corner, click Welcome Guest and then select Setup from the menu.

3. Click Downloads under Install NGC CLI from the Setup page.

4. From the CLI Install page, click the Windows, Linux, or MacOS tab, according to the platform from which you will be running NGC Catalog CLI.

5. Follow the instructions to install the CLI.

6. Open Command Prompt from the Run Box.

7. Verify the installation by entering ngc --version. The output should be NGC Catalog CLI x.y.z where x.y.z indicates the version.

8. Enter the following command ngc config set. You will be prompted to enter your NGC API Key.

Install Steps for CLS Scenario

This section will cover the steps required to properly install, configure, and license the NVIDIA driver for CLS users.

Installing the NVIDIA Driver

Now that you have installed Linux, the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Driver will fully enable GPU operation. Before proceeding with the NVIDIA Driver installation, please confirm that Nouveau is disabled. Instructions to confirm this are located in the RHEL section.

Downloading the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software Driver Using NGC

1. From a browser, go to https://ngc.nvidia.com/signin/email and then enter your email and password.

2. In the top right corner, click your user account icon and select Setup.

3. Click Get API Key to open the Setup > API Key page.

   Note

   The API Key is the mechanism used to authenticate your access to the NGC container registry.

   
   

4. Click Generate API Key to generate your API key.

   Note

   A warning message appears to let you know that your old API key will become invalid if you create a new key.

   
   

5. Click Confirm to generate the key.

6. Your API key appears.

   Important

   You only need to generate an API Key once. NGC does not save your key, so store it in a secure place. (You can copy your API Key to the clipboard by clicking the copy icon to the right of the API key.)Should you lose your API Key, you can generate a new one from the NGC website. When you generate a new API Key, the old one is invalidated.

   
   

7. 1. Run the following commands to install the NGC CLI for AMD64

   AMD64 Linux Install: The NGC CLI binary for Linux is supported on Ubuntu 16.04 and later distributions.

   • Download, unzip, and install from the command line by moving to a directory where you have execute permissions and then running the following command:

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   wget --content-disposition https://ngc.nvidia.com/downloads/ngccli_linux.zip && unzip ngccli_linux.zip && chmod u+x ngc-cli/ngc
           

   Note

   The NGC CLI installations for Windows NGC CLI, Arm64 MacOs, or Intel MacOs can be found here

   • Check the binary’s MD5 hash to ensure the file wasn’t corrupted during download.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ md5sum -c ngc.md5
           

   • Add your current directory to path.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ echo "export PATH=\"\$PATH:$(pwd)\"" >> ~/.bash_profile && source ~/.bash_profile
           

   • You must configure NGC CLI for your use so that you can run the commands. Enter the following command, including your API key when prompted.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ ngc config set
   
   Enter API key [no-apikey]. Choices: [<VALID_APIKEY>, 'no-apikey']:
   
   Enter CLI output format type [ascii]. Choices: [ascii, csv, json]: ascii
   
   Enter org [no-org]. Choices: ['no-org']:
   
   Enter team [no-team]. Choices: ['no-team']:
   
   Enter ace [no-ace]. Choices: ['no-ace']:
   
   Successfully saved NGC configuration to /home/$username/.ngc/config
           

   • Download the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software Driver.

Installing the NVIDIA Driver using the .run file with RHEL

1. Register machine to RHEL using subscription-manager with the command below.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ subscription-manager register
           

   
   

2. Satisfy the external dependency for EPEL for DKMS.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm
           

   
   

3. For RHEL 8, ensure that the system has the correct Linux kernel sources from the Red Hat repositories.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ dnf install -y kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers-$(uname -r)
           

   Note

   The NVIDIA driver requires that the kernel headers and development packages for the running version of the kernel be installed at the time of the driver installation, as well whenever the driver is rebuilt. For example, if your system is running kernel version 4.4.0, the 4.4.0 kernel headers and development packages must also be installed.

   
   

4. Install additional dependencies for NVIDIA drivers.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ dnf install elfutils-libelf-devel.x86_64
   $ dnf install -y tar bzip2 make automake gcc gcc-c++ pciutils libglvnd-devel
           

   
   

5. Update the running kernel:

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ dnf install -y kernel kernel-core kernel-modules
           

   
   

6. Confirm the system has the correct Linux kernel sources from the Red Hat repositories after update.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ dnf install -y kernel-devel-$(uname -r) kernel-headers-$(uname -r)
           

   
   

7. Download the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software Driver.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ ngc registry resource download-version "nvaie/vgpu_guest_driver_x_x:xxx.xx.xx"
           

   Note

   Where x_x:xxx.xx.xx is the current driver version from |nc|.

   
   

8. Navigate to the directory containing the NVIDIA Driver .run file. Then, add the Executable permission to the NVIDIA Driver file using the chmod command.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ sudo chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.xx-grid.run
           

   Note

   Where xxx.xx.xx is the current driver version from |nc|.

   
   

9. From the console shell, run the driver installer and accept defaults.

   Copy

   Copied!

               
   
               
   $ sudo sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-xxx.xx.xx-grid.run
           

   Note

   Where xxx.xx.xx is the current driver version from |nc|.

   Note

   Accept any warnings and ignore the CC version check

   
   

10. Reboot the system.

    Copy

    Copied!

                
    
                
    $ sudo reboot
            

    
    

11. After the system has rebooted, confirm that you can see your NVIDIA vGPU device in the output from nvidia-smi.

    Copy

    Copied!

                
    
                
    $ nvidia-smi
            

    
    

After installing the NVIDIA vGPU compute driver, you can license any NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software licensed products you are using.