Installing NVIDIA GPU drivers on Azure N-Series VM

I provisioned an NV8as_v4 virtual machine in my Azure subscription. The application I plan on running requires OpenGL 2.0 or greater support so I'm looking at Azure's N-series VMs for their GPU support. However, I'm running into issues getting NVIDIA drivers installed on this machine. Here is what I've tried and the result of each so far:

  • Provisioned the VM and attempted to install drivers manually according to instructions here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/n-series-driver-setup. Running the executable driver file indicates that no supported video card was found. See Screenshot #1.
  • Provisioned the VM and attempted to install the NVIDIA GPU Driver Extension via the Azure portal (VM > Extensions > Add). The result of the extension installation was Provisioning Failed and the server ended up in an infinite reboot cycle (I could log in if I did it quickly enough, but received a warning that a reboot was imminent with a reboot initiated within seconds). I was able to pull up Device Manager before the reboot. No NVIDIA drivers detected (see Screenshot #2).
  • Deleted the prior VM and provisioned another, this time installing the NVIDIA GPU Driver Extension as part of the VM provisioning (using the Advanced tab on VM setup). The result of the extension installation was Provisioning Succeeded but I experienced the same reboot behavior as above and Device Manager did not detect the NVIDIA drivers (See Screenshot #2).

I have to be missing something simple as this seems like basic functionality for an N-Series VM. Any thoughts on how I can get this N-Series VM to install the proper drivers?

SCREENSHOT #1

VM can't locate compatible hardware

SCREENSHOT #2

Device manager doesn't show NVIDIA drivers installed


Solution 1:

The NV8as_v4 virtual machine is using the AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 MxGPU. You can log in (RDP) to your VM, download and install drivers from this link: https://download.microsoft.com/download/3/8/9/3893407b-e8aa-4079-8592-735d7dd1c19a/Radeon-Pro-Software-for-Enterprise-GA.exe

You can learn more about the different GPU optimized sizes on this link: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/sizes-gpu