There are many installation methods for different use cases.
If you use Windows and not familiar with the tools like Prometheus/Grafana, you can simply use the PowerShell installation script to get the Exporter, Prometheus and Grafana installed on the same machine.
Follow the steps below:
- Download the installation script (save it with
.ps1
extension) - Open an administrative PowerShell prompt (search for PowerShell in the start menu - right-click - Run as Administrator)
- In the prompt, execute the script you have downloaded. For example,
C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME>\Downloads\windows.ps1
- Verify that you have Prometheus running by opening http://localhost:9090 in your browser.
- Verify that you have Grafana running by opening http://localhost:3000 in your browser.
- Login to Grafana using the initial credentials:
admin
-admin
. Set a new password if you like. - On Grafana, choose the option "Create - Import" from the top-left (big plus sign).
- Enter
14574
to the ID field and click "Load". - Finally, choose "Prometheus" as data source from the dropdown. Hit "import".
- Enjoy the dashboard!
If you are on a Debian-based system (.deb), you can install the exporter with the following command:
sudo dpkg -i nvidia-gpu-exporter_1.1.0_linux_amd64.deb
If you are on a Red Hat-based system (.rpm), you can install the exporter with the following command:
sudo rpm -i nvidia-gpu-exporter_1.1.0_linux_amd64.rpm
Note: .rpm and .deb packages only support systems using systemd as init system.
- Go to the releases and download the latest release archive for your platform.
- Extract the archive.
- Move the binary to somewhere in your
PATH
.
Sample steps for Linux 64-bit:
VERSION=1.1.0
wget https://github.com/utkuozdemir/nvidia_gpu_exporter/releases/download/v${VERSION}/nvidia_gpu_exporter_${VERSION}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
tar -xvzf nvidia_gpu_exporter_${VERSION}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz
mv nvidia_gpu_exporter /usr/bin
nvidia_gpu_exporter --help
To install the exporter as a Windows service, follow the steps below:
- Open a powershell prompt (as a regular user):
- Run the following commands:
Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-Expression (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://get.scoop.sh')
- Open a privileged powershell prompt (right click - Run as administrator)
- Run the following commands:
scoop install git
scoop install nssm --global
scoop bucket add nvidia_gpu_exporter https://github.com/utkuozdemir/scoop_nvidia_gpu_exporter.git
scoop install nvidia_gpu_exporter/nvidia_gpu_exporter --global
New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Nvidia GPU Exporter" -Direction Inbound -Action Allow -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 9835
nssm install nvidia_gpu_exporter "C:\ProgramData\scoop\apps\nvidia_gpu_exporter\current\nvidia_gpu_exporter.exe"
Start-Service nvidia_gpu_exporter
These steps do the following:
- Installs Scoop package manager
- Installs git using Scoop (required for Buckets)
- Installs NSSM - a service manager using Scoop
- Installs the exporter using Scoop
- Exposes app's TCP port (
9835
) to be accessible from Windows Firewall - Installs the exporter as a Windows service using NSSM
- Starts the installed service
If your Linux distro is using systemd, you can install the exporter as a service using the unit file provided.
Follow these simple steps:
-
Download the Linux binary matching your CPU architecture and put it under
/usr/bin
directory. -
Create a system user and group named
nvidia_gpu_exporter
for the service:sudo useradd --system --no-create-home --shell /usr/sbin/nologin nvidia_gpu_exporter
-
Drop a copy of the file nvidia_gpu_exporter.service under
/etc/systemd/system
directory. -
Run
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
-
Start and enable the service to run on boot:
sudo systemctl enable --now nvidia_gpu_exporter
You can run the exporter in a Docker container.
For it to work, you will need to ensure the following:
- The
nvidia-smi
binary is bind-mounted from the host to the container under itsPATH
- The devices
/dev/nvidiaX
(depends on the number of GPUs you have) and/dev/nvidiactl
are mounted into the container - The library files
libnvidia-ml.so
andlibnvidia-ml.so.1
are mounted inside the container. They are typically found under/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
or/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/
. Locate them in your host to ensure you are mounting them from the correct path.
A working example with all these combined (tested in Ubuntu 20.04
):
$ docker run -d \
--name nvidia_smi_exporter \
--restart unless-stopped \
--device /dev/nvidiactl:/dev/nvidiactl \
--device /dev/nvidia0:/dev/nvidia0 \
-v /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvidia-ml.so:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvidia-ml.so \
-v /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvidia-ml.so.1:/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libnvidia-ml.so.1 \
-v /usr/bin/nvidia-smi:/usr/bin/nvidia-smi \
-p 9835:9835 \
utkuozdemir/nvidia_gpu_exporter:1.1.0
Using the exporter in Kubernetes is pretty similar with running it in Docker.
You can use the official helm chart to install the exporter.
The chart was tested on the following configuration:
- Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 with Kernel
5.8.0-55-generic
- K3s
v1.21.1+k3s1
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super
- Nvidia Driver version
465.27
- NCasT4_v3 series VM node
- Nvidia Tesla T4 GPU
- Nvidia Driver version
470.57.02
- Ubuntu
18.04
node image
By default, GPU resource allocations must be whole numbers. Unlike CPU and memory allocations, GPUs cannot be subdivided into smaller increments.
Multi Instance GPU (MIG) configurations are not in scope of these notes.
The GPU allocation limitations apply to all instances of Kubernetes, regardless of vendor.
limits:
memory: 1Gi
cpu: 1000m
nvidia.com/gpu: "1"
Unless the node has multiple GPUs, only a single GPU enabled deployment can run per node, assuming the node has a single GPU. This means that the nvidia_gpu_exporter
cannot be run as a separate deployment or as a sidecar because it will be unable to schedule the GPU.
This is a particularly vague area in Nvidia's fragmented documentation and while there are several articles online outlining Nvidia driver installation on Ubuntu and other distros, there is little that explains how this works in managed Kubernetes.
Containerized setups require:
- Nvidia GPU drivers for the specific Linux distribution
- Nvidia Container Toolkit
In AKS this manifests as:
- The AKS node Ubuntu image already packages the GPU drivers, here.
- The Nvidia Device Plugin exposes the GPU to containers requesting GPU resources.
Testing locally and within several VMs on Azure confirms that the drivers are packaged with the VM image and do not need to be installed separately.
For example running a Docker image locally with no GPU drivers using docker exec -ti
confirms no drivers present in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
.
Running the same image on an AKS GPU node reveals the following GPU driver files, confirming the driver injection using node OS image and Nvidia Driver Plugin.
libnvidia-allocator.so.1 -> libnvidia-allocator.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-allocator.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-cfg.so.1 -> libnvidia-cfg.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-cfg.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-compiler.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-ml.so.1 -> libnvidia-ml.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-ml.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-opencl.so.1 -> libnvidia-opencl.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-opencl.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler.so.1 -> libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler.so.470.57.02
libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler.so.470.57.02
Additionally, we can now see the following in /usr/bin
nvidia-cuda-mps-control
nvidia-cuda-mps-server
nvidia-debugdump
nvidia-persistenced
nvidia-smi
Taking the above into account, we can embed the /usr/bin/nvidia_gpu_exporter
into a GPU enabled deployment through a multi-stage Docker build using the utkuozdemir/nvidia_gpu_exporter:0.5.0
as the base image.
Extending the Docker entrypoint with:
/usr/bin/nvidia_gpu_exporter --web.listen-address=:9835 --web.telemetry-path=/metrics --nvidia-smi-command=nvidia-smi --log.level=info --query-field-names=AUTO --log.format=logfmt &
This reduces overall complexity, inherits the packaged drivers & nvidia-smi, and most importantly leverages the same GPU resource request as the deployment/GPU you are trying to monitor.
It is recommended to add logic to only start the nvidia_gpu_exporter
if an Nvidia GPU is detected.