Dell EMC PowerEdge MX Modular Platform Installation, Implementation and Administration - course

In the certification course listed above we discuss the options available for all IOM fabrics in A,B and C.

Recently i got asked by a student to expand on the option of having GPU’s available as part of fabric B, I thought the following might be useful to share.

Note: this configuration is only supported in Fabric B.

Amulet are a partner that have developed the technology that enables GPU acceleration in a PowerEdge MX modular environment.

If a customer decides to go for this option, the following happens. Fabric B in the compute nodes need to be populated with an Amulet Hotkey Mezzanine card that enable’s direct communication to the GPU’s that are hosted in the rear IOM module.

The rear IOMs called CoreModules are populated in fabric B and can hold up to four CoreCartridge.

The CoreCartridges have two NVIDIA T4 GPUs. Each IOM with four cartridges can provide a total of 8 GPU’s.

Giving us a total of 16 GPUs with two IOMS populated in fabric B1 and B2.

Mapping as with any fabric A or B in the MX7000 is direct. In the example below it shows the CoreModule in B1, the same mapping is applicable to B2. If there’s two fully populated CoreModules in B1 and B2 each compute sled would receive two GPU’s i.e., 1 from each IOM.

A video below explains in more detail how the IOM that house the Core Cartridges map to the compute sleds.

Video link showing the IOM

There’s also a white paper that discusses using the GPU’s for VDI Graphics Acceleration.

Technical white paper VDI graphics acceleration on a dell mx7000 modular chassis

Dell EMC PowerEdge MX Modular Platform Installation, Implementation and Administration