NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software#

Added in version 2.0.

NVIDIA Driver#

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.

Installing NGC Catalog CLI#

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.

Installing the NVIDIA Driver#

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#

Important

Before you begin you will need to generate or use an existing API key.

  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.

    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:

    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.

    $ md5sum -c ngc.md5

    • Add your current directory to path.

    $ 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.

     1$ ngc config set
 2
 3Enter API key [no-apikey]. Choices: [<VALID_APIKEY>, 'no-apikey']:
 4
 5Enter CLI output format type [ascii]. Choices: [ascii, csv, json]: ascii
 6
 7Enter org [no-org]. Choices: ['no-org']:
 8
 9Enter team [no-team]. Choices: ['no-team']:
10
11Enter ace [no-ace]. Choices: ['no-ace']:
12
13Successfully 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#

Important

Before starting the driver install Secure Boot will need to be disabled as shown in Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 section.

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

    $ subscription-manager register

  2. Satisfy the external dependency for EPEL for DKMS.

    $ 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.

    $ 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.

    1$ dnf install elfutils-libelf-devel.x86_64
2$ dnf install -y tar bzip2 make automake gcc gcc-c++ pciutils libglvnd-devel

  5. Update the running kernel:

    $ 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.

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

  7. Download the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software Driver.

    $ 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.

    1$ 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.

    $ 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.

    $ sudo reboot

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

    $ nvidia-smi

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

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