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Table Of Contents
3D Rendering Options
You can select the 3D rendering options for each virtual machine to be Hardware, Software, or Automatic.
Table 56. 3D Rendering Options
Rendering Option Description
Hardware The virtual machine must have access to a physical GPU. If the
GPU is not available, the virtual machine cannot power on.
Software The virtual machine's virtual device uses a software renderer
and will not attempt to use a GPU, even if one is present.
Automatic The default setting. The virtual device selects whether to use a
physical GPU or software-based rendering. If a GPU is available
on the system and has the resources required by the virtual
machine, the virtual machine uses the GPU. Otherwise software
rendering is used.
How Enabling 3D Graphics Aects the Virtual Machine
You can use vMotion to migrate virtual machines that have 3D graphics enabled. If the 3D Renderer is set
to Automatic, virtual machines use either the GPU on the destination host or a software renderer,
depending on GPU availability. To migrate virtual machines with the 3D Renderer set to Hardware, the
destination host must have a GPU.
You can set a group of virtual machines to use only Hardware rendering. For example, if you have virtual
machines that run CAD applications or have other complex engineering capabilities, you might require
that those virtual machines have persistent high-quality 3D capability present. When you migrate such
virtual machines, the destination host must also have GPU capability. If the host does not have GPU, the
migration cannot proceed. To migrate such virtual machines, you must turn them off and change the
renderer setting to Automatic.
Configure 3D Graphics and Video Cards
When you enable 3D graphics, you can select a hardware or software graphics renderer and optimize the
graphics memory allocated to the virtual machine. You can increase the number of displays in multi-
monitor configurations and change the video card settings to meet your graphics requirements.
The default setting for total video RAM is adequate for minimal desktop resolution. For more complex
situations, you can change the default memory. Typically, 3D applications require a video memory of 64–
512MB.
Fault Tolerance is not supported for virtual machines that have 3D graphics enabled.
Prerequisites
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Verify that the virtual machine is powered off.
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Verify that the virtual machine compatibility is ESXi 5.0 and later.
vSphere Virtual Machine Administration
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