Liqid has a new solution for the VMware shops that want to take advantage of its composable infrastructure. For those unfamiliar with Liqid, the company has a solution to expose devices to servers as though they were local devices, using a number of fabrics. Today, the main fabric is PCIe, but there are other fabrics available. The benefit is that by having the ability to expose devices to different machines, one can better utilize resources. That is similar to some of the underlying principles behind VMware.
Liqid Matrix vCenter Plugin Launched
Here is a look at the Liqid Matrix vCenter plugin that we can see using the VMware vSphere client.
One specific case that the company is trying to showcase is the concept of dynamic GPU sharing where perhaps a set of GPUs is used for VDI during part of the day and doing GPU accelerated inference workloads during other hours.
Here is a look at attaching two GPUs to a machine using the VMware vSphere Client.
Of course, the GUI is nice, but the real power comes from the underlying APIs that allow one to automate tasks of re-assigning hardware.
Final Words
For VMware users that want to get into composable infrastructure, this is a very interesting solution since it can use a PCIe switched fabric. Most of the DPU options on the market focus on bringing storage and GPUs over an Ethernet or other network fabric.
One area that we had asked Liqid about previously is around the support model. It is one thing to have the ability to use something, it is another to get support for it. We were told that the primary support for any issues in this solution will be through Liqid as the entire solution is not certified to the point that VMware will field calls on it. To many organizations this is going to be one of the most important factors so we asked.
Overall, for VMware folks that want to try composable infrastructure, but who are not ready to jump into the still relatively immature DPU market, the Liqid Matrix vCenter Plugin is going to be an interesting solution to increase performance.
