Getting started with the NCsv3 series and NCas_T4_v3 series

By Hugo Affaticati, Program Manager

Useful resources

Information on the Microsoft NCsv3-series  

Information on the Microsoft NCas_T4_v3-series

Pre-requisites

Deploy a virtual machine on Microsoft Azure Portal.

Key values:

• Size: NC6s v3 (also available NC12s v3 and NC24s v3) or NC16as_T4_v3 (also available NC4as_T4_v3, NC8as_T4_v3, and NC64as_T4_v3)
• Image: Ubuntu HPC 18.04 (recommended, also available Ubuntu HPC 20.04)
• Availability: no redundancy required for benchmarking
• Disk: 2048 GB data disk

Step 1: NVIDIA driver and CUDA

Verify the NVIDIA driver version

cd /mnt
nvidia-smi

If the driver version is less than 510, update both the driver and the CUDA versions

sudo wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu1804/x86_64/cuda-ubuntu1804.pin 

sudo mv cuda-ubuntu1804.pin /etc/apt/preferences.d/cuda-repository-pin-600

sudo wget https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/11.6.1/local_installers/cuda-repo-ubuntu1804-11-6-local_11.6.1-510.47.03-1_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i cuda-repo-ubuntu1804-11-6-local_11.6.1-510.47.03-1_amd64.deb

sudo apt-key add /var/cuda-repo-ubuntu1804-11-6-local/7fa2af80.pub

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get -y install cuda

Restart the machine

sudo reboot

Step 2: Docker

The next step is to update Docker to the latest version.

cd /mnt

sudo apt update

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common

curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu  $(lsb_release -cs)  stable"

sudo apt update

sudo apt-get install docker-ce

Update the Docker root directory in the docker daemon configuration file

sudo vi /etc/docker/daemon.json

Add the line after the first curly bracket

"data-root": "/mnt/data",

Verify the previous steps and enable docker

docker --version

sudo systemctl restart docker

sudo systemctl enable docker

Register your user for Docker

sudo groupadd docker

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

newgrp docker

You should not have any permission issues when running

docker info

Step 3: Mount the data disk

Find the managed disk you deployed with the deployment of the virtual machine

lsblk -o NAME,HCTL,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT | grep -i "sd"

Get the name (sda, sdb, or sdc…) corresponding to the 2TB disk from the previous line.

Replace “sdc” in the following lines 2 and 3 by the accurate name.

sudo mkdir /mnt/resource_mdisk

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc && sudo fsck /dev/sdc

sudo mount /dev/sdc /mnt/resource_mdisk

sudo chown -R azureuser:users resource_mdisk/