NVIDIA vGPU for Compute Limitations#
This page collects platform-specific product limitations and known issues for NVIDIA vGPU for Compute. For an introduction to vGPU concepts and architecture, see NVIDIA vGPU for Compute Overview.
GPU Monitoring and Profiling on Hypervisor Hosts#
DCGM monitoring caveat for vGPU environments
NVIDIA Data Center GPU Manager (DCGM) is not supported in vGPU environments:
Hypervisor hosts: Not supported on hosts running the NVIDIA AI Enterprise vGPU Manager (host driver), including Linux KVM with SR-IOV passthrough and MIG-backed vGPU.
vGPU guest VMs: Not supported inside guests for MIG-backed or time-sliced vGPU.
Expect missing or zero metrics, profiling errors, and loss of visibility; tools such as NVIDIA Nsight Compute may fail to read performance counters in these setups.
Hypervisor Limitations and Known Issues#
See Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM product limitations.
See Ubuntu KVM product limitations.
See VMware vSphere product limitations.
Large-Memory VMs (64 GB+ MMIO)
Some GPUs require 64 GB or more of MMIO space. When a vGPU on such a GPU is assigned to a VM with 32 GB or more of memory on ESXi, the VM’s MMIO space must be raised to the GPU’s requirement.
Details: Requirements for Using vGPU on GPUs Requiring 64 GB or More of MMIO Space with Large-Memory VMs.
MMIO space lookup — GPUs requiring 64 GB or more
GPU |
MMIO Space Required |
|---|---|
NVIDIA B300 HGX |
768 GB |
NVIDIA B200 HGX |
768 GB |
NVIDIA H200 (all variants) |
512 GB |
NVIDIA H100 (all variants) |
256 GB |
NVIDIA H800 (all variants) |
256 GB |
NVIDIA H20 141 GB |
512 GB |
NVIDIA H20 96 GB |
256 GB |
NVIDIA L40 |
128 GB |
NVIDIA L20 |
128 GB |
NVIDIA L4 |
64 GB |
NVIDIA L2 |
64 GB |
NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada |
128 GB |
NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada |
64 GB |
NVIDIA A40 |
128 GB |
NVIDIA A30 |
64 GB |
NVIDIA A10 |
64 GB |
NVIDIA A100 80 GB (all variants) |
256 GB |
NVIDIA A100 40 GB (all variants) |
128 GB |
NVIDIA RTX A6000 |
128 GB |
NVIDIA RTX A5500 |
64 GB |
NVIDIA RTX A5000 |
64 GB |
Microsoft Windows Server Limitations and Known Issues#
See Microsoft Windows Server product limitations.
NVIDIA AI Enterprise supports only the Tesla Compute Cluster (TCC) driver model for Windows guest drivers.
Warning
MIG-backed vGPU is not supported for Windows guests on NVIDIA H100 GPUs (including profiles such as H100XM-1-10C). Only time-sliced vGPU is supported there; assigning a MIG-backed profile to a Windows VM will fail at guest driver install.
Windows guest VMs only support running native applications—no containers. NVIDIA AI Enterprise features that require containerization are not supported on Windows guest operating systems.
On generic Linux under KVM, guest OS support for Windows follows the hypervisor vendor’s matrix.
More context: Non-containerized Applications on Hypervisors and Guest Operating Systems Supported with vGPU table.