NVIDIA Sync#
NVIDIA Sync is a system tray utility for Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu that simplifies launching applications and containers on remote Linux systems. Use it with DGX Spark, GB10, DGX Station, or other SSH-accessible Linux hosts on your LAN or in the cloud.
This guide covers installation, connecting to devices, multi-node clustering, remote access over Tailscale, and launching IDEs and custom applications.
Topics#
Install NVIDIA Sync, complete onboarding, and learn the typical workflow.
Add devices on your local network, import SSH aliases, and connect over the LAN.
Access devices on your private network when you are off the LAN.
Configure ConnectX-7 interconnects and SSH for multi-node DGX Spark clusters.
Inspect, verify, or remove the ConnectX-7 cluster network plan on each node.
Launch IDEs, custom scripts, port forwarding, and the DGX Dashboard.
Overview#
NVIDIA Sync needs only the hostname on your network plus your username and password for the device. After that, you can one-click launch local Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) and applications, such as VS Code, Cursor, and AI Workbench directly from the NVIDIA Sync UI.
You can add custom applications and scripts to run on the remote device. NVIDIA Sync has a Custom Application feature that handles connection details, such as port forwarding, so that you can run web applications or containers on the remote device and still access them as if they were running locally.
In addition, NVIDIA Sync has a Cluster Assistant feature that guides you through clustering multiple DGX Spark devices using the ConnectX-7 interconnect links. Setting the cluster up is the first step to getting multi-node libraries and runtimes (like the NVIDIA Collective Communications Library (NCCL) and Message Passing Interface (MPI)) to use the high-bandwidth ConnectX-7 network between the DGX Spark nodes.
Finally, NVIDIA Sync has a Tailscale Integration that creates a secure tunnel to a device on your private network. This lets you access your DGX devices for compute and inference without being on that network, such as when you are at a coffee shop or a job site.
New users should begin with Getting Started.
Terminology#
Adding a device — Manually configuring SSH details so that NVIDIA Sync can access the device and manage key-based access. This requires the device password.
Importing a device — Selecting an existing SSH alias from your local main SSH configuration file for NVIDIA Sync to use. This bypasses manual configuration in the Sync application.
Connecting a device — Activating the SSH connection to an added or imported device through NVIDIA Sync so that you can launch applications on it.
Adding a Tailscale device — Enabling the Tailscale integration and following the steps to add an added or imported device to the same tailnet as your NVIDIA Sync application.
Direct connection — Connecting to a device on the same network as your laptop without using the Tailscale integration.
Tailscale connection — Connecting to a device using the Tailscale integration.
ConnectX-7 — High-bandwidth network adapters used on DGX Spark for data-plane links between nodes in a cluster.
Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) — Cable and module form factor used for ConnectX-7 network connections between DGX Spark systems or between a DGX Spark and a switch.
Cluster — A named set of 2–4 DGX Spark devices that NVIDIA Sync configures to communicate over ConnectX-7 interconnect links for multi-node workloads.
Cluster Assistant — A guided workflow in NVIDIA Sync that validates devices, applies ConnectX-7 network settings, checks link performance, and configures SSH between DGX Spark nodes.
NVIDIA Collective Communications Library (NCCL) — A library often used for multi-GPU and multi-node collective communication in AI workloads.
Message Passing Interface (MPI) — A standard for distributed communication commonly used in multi-node technical and AI applications.
Over-the-air (OTA) update — A delivered system software update for DGX Spark that is identified by an OTA version number in Sync readiness checks.
User ID (UID) and group ID (GID) — Numeric identifiers for the Linux user and primary group on each node.
Limitations#
NVIDIA Sync does not support connections through jump or bastion servers.