Unable to power on virtual machine enabled with virtual graphic processing unit (vGPU)

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 6.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Issue/Introduction

• Virtual machine fails to power on when virtual graphic processing unit (vGPU) is enabled.
• In the vSphere console, you see this error:
  
  "The amount of graphics resource available in the parent resource pool is insufficient for the operation. An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM vm-name. Failed to start the virtual machine. Module DevicePowerOn power on failed. Could not initialize plugin "" for vGPU 'grid_k120q'. vGPU 'grid_k120q' is not recognized."

Cause

This issue occurs when an incorrect NVIDIA VIB loaded onto the ESXi host. NVIDIA has two graphics packages available for shared graphics environments and one is specific to vGPU.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, uninstall the existing vib from the ESXi host and install the correct vgx vib for vGPU support that is available on the NVIDIA website.

 

To verify the VIB that is loaded on the host, run this command from a host console session:
 

esxcli software vib list | grep NVIDIA

 

Note: Though the package indicates that a host reboot is not required, the host must be rebooted after the VIB is installed for initializing xorg properly.

Additional Information

For more information, see the https://docs.nvidia.com/vgpu/deployment/vmware/latest/index.html