Nvidia GPU monitoring with Netdata

Monitors performance metrics (memory usage, fan speed, pcie bandwidth utilization, temperature, etc.) using nvidia-smi cli tool.

Requirements and Notes

• You must have the nvidia-smi tool installed and your NVIDIA GPU(s) must support the tool. Mostly the newer high end models used for AI / ML and Crypto or Pro range, read more about nvidia_smi.

• You must enable this plugin, as its disabled by default due to minor performance issues:

  cd /etc/netdata   # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory, if different
  sudo ./edit-config python.d.conf

  Remove the '#' before nvidia_smi so it reads: nvidia_smi: yes.

• On some systems when the GPU is idle the nvidia-smi tool unloads and there is added latency again when it is next queried. If you are running GPUs under constant workload this isn't likely to be an issue.

• Currently the nvidia-smi tool is being queried via cli. Updating the plugin to use the nvidia c/c++ API directly should resolve this issue. See discussion here: https://github.com/netdata/netdata/pull/4357

• Contributions are welcome.

• Make sure netdata user can execute /usr/bin/nvidia-smi or wherever your binary is.

• If nvidia-smi process is not killed after netdata restart you need to off loop_mode.

• poll_seconds is how often in seconds the tool is polled for as an integer.

Charts

It produces the following charts:

• PCI Express Bandwidth Utilization in KiB/s
• Fan Speed in percentage
• GPU Utilization in percentage
• Memory Bandwidth Utilization in percentage
• Encoder/Decoder Utilization in percentage
• Memory Usage in MiB
• Temperature in celsius
• Clock Frequencies in MHz
• Power Utilization in Watts
• Memory Used by Each Process in MiB
• Memory Used by Each User in MiB
• Number of User on GPU in num

Configuration

Edit the python.d/nvidia_smi.conf configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata   # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory, if different
sudo ./edit-config python.d/nvidia_smi.conf

Sample:

loop_mode    : yes
poll_seconds : 1
exclude_zero_memory_users : yes