Introduction

The NVIDIA® DGX™ systems (DGX-1, DGX-2, and DGX A100 servers, and NVIDIA DGX Station™ and DGX Station A100 systems) are shipped with DGX™ OS which incorporates the NVIDIA DGX software stack built upon the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Instead of running the Ubuntu distribution, you can run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the DGX system and still take advantage of the advanced DGX features.

This document explains how to install and configure the NVIDIA DGX software stack on DGX systems installed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Note: While it may be possible to use other derived Linux distributions besides Red Hat Enterprise Linux, not all have been tested and qualified by NVIDIA. Refer to the DGX Software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Release Notes for the list of tested and qualified software and Linux distributions.

Prerequisites

The following are required (or recommended where indicated).

Red Hat Subscription

You need a Red Hat subscription if you plan to install and use Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on the DGX. A subscription also lets you obtain update packages and additional packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You can either purchase a subscription or obtain a free evaluation subscription from the Red Hat Software & Download Center.

Note: Of the available Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms, only Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server is supported on DGX systems (DGX servers and DGX Station workstation). Other Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms are not supported on any DGX system.

Access to Repositories

The repositories can be accessed from the internet.

If your installation does not allow connection to the internet, see the section Installing Software on Air-Gapped NVIDIA DGX Systems for information about updating software on “air-gapped” systems.

If you are using a proxy server, then follow the instructions in the section Configuring a System Proxy to make sure the system can access the necessary URIs.

Note:

You can use yum-config-manager to conveniently enable certain repositories. To use yum-config-manager, first install the yum utilities. 

sudo yum -y install yum-utils

NVIDIA Repositories

  • NVIDIA DGX Software Repository

    After installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the DGX system, you must enable the NVIDIA DGX software repository. The repository includes the NVIDIA drivers and software for supporting DGX systems.

    See the section Enabling the Repositories for instructions on how to enable the repositories.

Red Hat Repositories

Installation of the DGX Software over Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 requires access to several additional repositories.

  • Red Hat Enterprise Server Extras Repository (required for container support):

    DGX Servers: rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

    DGX Station: rhel-7-workstation-extras-rpms

  • Red Hat Enterprise Server Optional Repository (required by NVIDIA System Manager (NVSM) and the GPU driver):

    DGX Servers: rhel-7-server-optional-rpms

    DGX Station: rhel-7-workstation-optional-rpms

  • Red Hat Software Collections Repository:

    This repository is required by the NVSM tool for Python 3. If you do not have access to the Red Hat software collections repository, refer to https://access.redhat.com/solutions/472793 for instructions on requesting access for free.

    Important: NVSM is not supported with the python3 package. Be sure to only install the rh-python36 package per the instructions in Installing Diagnostic Components.

    DGX Servers: rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms

Network File System

On DGX servers, the data drives are meant to be used as a cache. DGX Station users can follow the same usage, or can alternatively opt to use these drives for storage. When using the data drives as cache, a network file system (NFS) is recommended to take advantage of the cache file system provided by the DGX software stack.

BMC Password

The DGX BMC comes with default login credentials as specified in Appendix B: Changing the BMC Login.

Important:

NVIDIA recommends disabling the default username and creating a unique BMC username and strong password as soon as possible. Refer to Appendix B: Changing the BMC Login for instructions.