Short description Open WebUI is a polished, locally hosted chat interface for your own models. It looks and feels like ChatGPT but runs entirely on your machine. Purpose and how people use it It is the front door to a local AI stack. People use it for everyday chat with local models, for document chat…
Tag: vGPU
Part 0a: Setting Up Windows (WSL, Ubuntu, and Docker)
Who this is for This guide gets a Windows machine ready to run the rest of the stack. You will install WSL (a way to run real Linux inside Windows), the Ubuntu Linux system, and Docker Desktop. After this you can follow any tool guide in the series. You only do this once. Step 1:…
Build a Local AI Stack: Series Index
This is a set of quick setup guides for running a full local AI tooling stack on your own hardware. Every tool runs on your machine, talks to your own models, and costs nothing per request. The guides are written to be posted one at a time, so each one stands on its own. Before…
NVIDIA A2: Cooling a Lower-Power GPU with a DIY Blower Fan
My third ESXi host, ESX-3, runs an NVIDIA A2 instead of the L4 found in ESX-1 and ESX-2. The A2 is a lower-power data center GPU with a 60 W TDP compared to the L4’s 72 W. Like the L4, it is passively cooled and supports NVIDIA vGPU. I am cooling it with the same…
n3rdware NVIDIA L4 Coolers: 3-Slot vs 1-Slot Compared
As part of my collaboration with Robbe from n3rdware, he designed two different aftermarket coolers for the NVIDIA L4: a 3-slot version and a 1-slot version. I tested each one on a separate ESXi host running the same stress test. This article brings both results together in a direct comparison so you can see how…
NVIDIA L4 Cooling Results with a Custom 1 Slot Cooler from n3rdware
I’m happy to say that my collaboration with Robbe from n3rdware has finally reached the finish line. He has been designing and selling custom GPU coolers for years, with most of his customers coming from the home lab community, so this project was in very capable hands from the start. As part of this collaboration,…
My NVIDIA L4 Now Runs 18°C Cooler with a Custom 3 Slot Cooler
I’m happy to say that my collaboration with Robbe from n3rdware has finally reached the finish line. Robbe has been designing and selling custom GPU coolers for years, with most of his customers coming from the home lab community, so this project was in very capable hands from the start. Our goal was to build…
After Upgrading vGPU from 16.9 to Newer Versions, nvidia-smi Fails on ESXi: “Couldn’t communicate with the NVIDIA driver. Make sure that the latest NVIDIA driver is installed and running.”
I recently ran into a tricky issue while upgrading NVIDIA vGPU on a VMware ESXi host using an NVIDIA A2 GPU. On my Management Core Server, I replaced an NVIDIA Tesla P4 with an NVIDIA A2 because the A2 has more VRAM and supports newer vGPU releases. The P4 is still a capable GPU and…
Building a Custom Silent Cooler for NVIDIA A2 and L4 Data Center GPUs with n3rdware
My goal with my home lab has always been clear. Keep it as silent as possible and as cool as possible, without sacrificing performance. Recently I started working more seriously with the NVIDIA A2 and the NVIDIA L4. Both are data center GPUs designed to operate inside rack servers with strong, directed airflow. They do…
Crysis 2 Remastered Breaks Gaming Memory Leak World Record
Before diving into the world of data center workloads, I decided to warm up by testing the performance of the PNY NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition GPU with a variety of games. I played a handful of titles, and before long, viewers on my YouTube channel started suggesting more games to benchmark with…