Vantage on AWS instances?

[chuckie7413]

Hi,

Is Vantage 2 compatible with the nvidia A10 on a g5 aws instance? Or even the older g4dn that uses the Tesla T4? Are they classed as DXR compatible which is the minimum requirement of Vantage 2 right?

Thanks,

Richard

[Phillip Miller]

You should be able to establish an AMI that works for Vantage using T4's or A10's. Just make sure your instance has Windows, the proper NV driver, and you point to your license server for your Vantage license.

[chuckie7413]

Hi Phillip. I gave it a try on an G4dn instance and it did not run. Gave me a "no DXR compatible devices found" error.
Attached is a screenshot of the machine info from running vray benchmark GPU-RTX test scene (which ran with no errors)
Do you know if anyone on the chaos team ever tested it running on an aws instance or was it just an educated guess? Is there something particular the driver needs to be in order for it to work? it is the grid data center drivers i believe so i can terradici into the instance and run gpu related renders fine on it.
Thanks,
Richard

[Phillip Miller]

Hi Richard - we have successfully tried Vantage on T4's in AWS and GCP.
But now that I see the name "Tesla" there, it reminds me that those GPUs can run as a "compute device" that is not recognized as a display device, and DirectX might not see them in that mode. The benchmark doesn't use DirectX, so it could easily work while DXR fails. We can do some checking on Monday to see if people here remember setting things up to accommodate that. It's very possibly a driver setting.

[chuckie7413]

Thanks for the fast response Phil! Yeah any help/advice for getting it to work would be great. I will have a search as well and see what i can find on that matter.
Have a good weekend!
Best,
Richard

[vladimir.nedev]

The GPU has to be in WDDM mode. If it's in TCC mode, Vantage cannot use it.
The nvidia-smi command can be used to check the current mode and switch between the two modes,
but I don't know if you are allowed to do that on AWS instances.

If it's not that, the log in %appdata%/Vantage/debug_log.txt might have more information.

Greetings,
Vladimir Nedev

[chuckie7413]

Hi vladimir.nedev
Sorry been off for a week.
I logged onto the aws instance and ran the nvidia-smi command and it seems it is in WDDM mode (see screenshot). Aws also mentions by default, Grid drivers (which is what is installed on the instance) are in WDDM mode.
I then looked at the Vantage debug log and it had this info.

11:04:40.664 [inf] === 09/05/2023 ===
11:04:40.664 [inf] Chaos Vantage v2.0.1 (build 1831340, hash c3cbdf10)
Build date: Aug.04.2023
11:04:42.295 [inf] Window initialized in 1631.3 ms
11:04:42.295 [inf] System memory: 15.71 GB
11:04:42.295 [inf] Windows version is 10.0.17763.
11:04:42.295 [inf] Hardware accelerated scheduling: off
11:04:42.297 [inf] Device #0: NVIDIA Tesla T4, 15158 MB (DevId=0x1EB8, SubSysId=0x12A210DE)
11:04:42.297 [inf]   Output device: \\.\DISPLAY2, HDR=0, BitsPerColor=8, ColorSpace=0, RedPrimary=(0.639, 0.339), GreenPrimary=(0.279, 0.601), BluePrimary=(0.141, 0.078), WhitePoint=(0.313, 0.329), MinLuminance=0.500, MaxLuminance=270.0, MaxFullFrameLuminance=270.0
11:04:42.596 [Wrn]   Can't use device #0 - no INLINE raytracing support (0x0). Skipping.
11:04:42.618 [inf] Device #1: Microsoft Basic Render Driver, 0 MB (DevId=0x8C, SubSysId=0x0)
11:04:42.618 [inf] Device #2: Microsoft Basic Render Driver, 0 MB (DevId=0x8C, SubSysId=0x0)
11:04:42.618 [ERR] No suitable GPU device found! A DXR-compatible device is required.
​

No inline raytracing support seems the main line? searching forums brought me to this thread and seems something to do with Windows and needing "10.0.19041 / 20H1 (May 2020 Update)"
https://forums.chaos.com/forum/chaos...patible-device

The AWS instance is running Windows Server 2019 Datacenter Version 10.0.17763 so i need to see about updating it.

I will try with an update and see if that works.

Best,

Richard