nvidia-smi shows high GPU utilization for vGPU VMs with active Horizon sessions

Symptom / Error

High GPU load is seen with vSphere/View deployments and NVIDIA GRID vGPU, this may be seen even when sessions/VMs are idle. nvidia-smi shows high GPU utilization for vGPU VMs with active Horizon session. vGPU VMs with an active Horizon connection utilize a high percentage of the GPU on the ESXi host. The GPU utilization remains high for the duration of the Horizon session even if there are no active applications running on the VM. NVIDIA Ref. #1735009

Workaround / Solution

There is no workaround currently and customers affected need to raise a support case with VMware who hope to release a fix in a future release of their product. The issue is within the Horizon View product and as such this is not an issue NVIDIA can resolve. The VMware Horizon 7.0.1 update included a fix for this issue when using the Blast Extreme protocol. Users encountering the issue when using PCoIP need to continue to raise the issue with VMware support.

Affected Products

VMware Horizon View 7.0 and earlier when using NVIDIA GRID vGPU and NVIDIA GRID Cards (K1, K2, M60, M6, M10).

Citrix Products

This issue only affects VMware Horizon View and related Blast Extreme and PCoIP protocols. Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp and HDX/ICA are unaffected by this issue.

References

This issue is documented in the latest release notes (Version 361.40 / 362.13) for NVIDIA GRID vGPU for VMware: