Right this moment, NICE DCV has a brand new title. So lengthy NICE DCV, welcome Amazon DCV. Right this moment, with the 2024.0 launch, together with enhancements and bug fixes, NICE DCV is rebranded to Amazon DCV.
The brand new title is now additionally used to persistently confer with the DCV protocol powering AWS managed providers similar to Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces.
What’s Amazon DCV
Amazon DCV is a high-performance distant show protocol. It enables you to securely ship distant desktops and utility streaming from any cloud or knowledge heart to any system, over various community circumstances. By utilizing Amazon DCV with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), you may run graphics-intensive functions remotely on EC2 situations. You’ll be able to then stream the outcomes to extra modest shopper machines, which eliminates the necessity for costly devoted workstations.
Amazon DCV helps each Home windows and main flavors of Linux working techniques on the server facet, offering you flexibility to suit your group’s wants. The client-side that receives the desktops and utility streamings might be the native DCV shopper for Home windows, Linux, or macOS or internet browsers. The DCV distant server and shopper switch solely encrypted pixels, not knowledge, so no confidential knowledge is downloaded from the DCV server. Whenever you select to make use of Amazon DCV on Amazon Net Companies (AWS) with EC2 situations, you may benefit from the AWS 108 Availability Zones throughout the 33 geographic Areas and 31 native zones, permitting your distant streaming providers to scale globally.
Since Amazon acquired NICE 8 years in the past, we’ve witnessed a various vary of consumers adopting DCV. From general-purpose customers visualizing enterprise functions to industry-specific professionals, DCV has confirmed to be versatile. As an example, artists have employed DCV to entry highly effective cloud workstations for his or her digital content material creation and rendering duties. Within the healthcare sector, medical imaging professionals have used DCV for distant visualization and evaluation of affected person knowledge. Geoscientists have used DCV to research reservoir simulation outcomes, whereas engineers in manufacturing have used it to visualise computational fluid dynamics experiments. The schooling and IT help industries have benefited from collaborative classes in DCV, wherein a number of customers can share a single desktop.
Notable prospects embrace Quantic Dream, an award-winning sport improvement studio that has harnessed DCV to create high-resolution, low-latency streaming providers for his or her artists and builders. Tally Options, an enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) providers supplier, has employed DCV to securely stream its ERP software program to hundreds of consumers. Volkswagen has used DCV to supply distant entry to computer-aided engineering (CAE) functions for over 1,000 automotive engineers. Amazon Kuiper, an initiative to carry broadband connectivity to underserved communities, has used DCV for designing complicated chips.
Inside AWS, DCV has been adopted by a number of providers to supply managed options to prospects. For instance, AppStream 2.0 makes use of DCV to supply safe, dependable, and scalable utility streaming. Moreover, since 2020, Amazon WorkSpaces Streaming Protocol (WSP), which is constructed on DCV and optimized for top efficiency, is accessible for Amazon WorkSpaces prospects. Right this moment, we’re additionally phasing out the WSP title and changing it with DCV. Going ahead, you should have DCV as a main protocol selection in Amazon WorkSpaces.
What’s new with model 2024.0
Amazon DCV 2024.0 introduces a number of fixes and enhancements for improved efficiency, safety, and ease of use. The 2024.0 launch now helps the most recent Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, bringing the most recent safety updates and prolonged long-term help to simplify system upkeep. The DCV shopper on Ubuntu 24.04 has in-built help for Wayland, providing higher graphical rendering effectivity and enhanced utility isolation. Moreover, DCV 2024.0 now allows the QUIC UDP protocol by default, permitting shoppers to profit from an optimized streaming expertise. The discharge additionally introduces the potential to clean the Linux host display screen when a distant person is linked, stopping native entry and interplay with the distant session.
How you can get began
The best solution to take a look at DCV is to spin up a WorkSpaces occasion from the WorkSpaces console, choosing one of many DCV-powered bundles, or creating an AppStream session. For this demo nevertheless, I need to present you tips on how to set up DCV server on an EC2 occasion.
I put in DCV server on two servers working on Amazon EC2, one working Home windows Server 2022 and one working Ubuntu 24.04. I additionally put in the shopper on my macOS laptop computer. The shopper and server packages can be found to obtain on our web site. For each servers, ensure the safety group authorizes inbound connection on UDP or TCP port 8443, the default port DCV makes use of.
The Home windows set up is simple: begin the msi
file, choose Subsequent
at every step and voilà. It was put in in much less time than it took me to jot down this sentence.
The set up on Linux deserves a bit extra care. Amazon Machine Photographs (AMI) for EC2 servers don’t embrace any desktop or graphical elements. As a prerequisite, I needed to set up the X Window System and a window supervisor, and configure X to let customers join and begin a graphical person interface session on the server. Thankfully, all these steps are effectively documented. Here’s a abstract of the instructions I used.
# set up desktop packages
$ sudo apt set up ubuntu-desktop
# set up a desktop supervisor
$ sudo apt set up gdm3
# reboot
$ sudo reboot
After the reboot, I put in the DCV server package deal
# Set up the server
$ sudo apt set up ./nice-dcv-server_2024.0.17794-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb
$ sudo apt set up ./nice-xdcv_2024.0.625-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb
# (elective) set up the DCV internet viewer to permit shoppers to attach from an online browser
$ sudo apt set up ./nice-dcv-web-viewer_2024.0.17794-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb
As a result of my server had no GPU, I additionally adopted these steps to put in X11 Dummy driver and configure X11 to make use of it.
Then, I began the service:
$ sudo systemctl allow dcvserver.service
$ sudo systemctl begin dcvserver.service
$ sudo systemctl standing dcvserver.service
I created a person on the working system degree and assigned a password and a house listing. Then, I checked my setup on the server earlier than attempting to attach from the server.
$ sudo dcv list-sessions
There aren't any classes obtainable.
$ sudo dcv create-session console --type digital --owner seb
$ sudo dcv list-sessions
Session: 'console' (proprietor:seb sort:digital)
As soon as my server configuration was prepared, I began the DCV shopper on my laptop computer. I solely needed to enter the IP tackle of the server and the username and password of the person to provoke a session.
![]() | ![]() |
On my laptop computer, I opened a brand new DCV shopper window and linked to the opposite EC2 server. After just a few seconds, I used to be in a position to remotely work with the Home windows and the Ubuntu machine working within the cloud.
On this instance, I give attention to putting in Amazon DCV on a single EC2 occasion. Nonetheless, when constructing your personal service infrastructure, you could need to discover the opposite elements which are a part of the DCV providing: Amazon DCV Session Supervisor, Amazon DCV Entry Console, and Amazon DCV Connection Gateway.
Pricing and availability
Amazon DCV is freed from costs when used on AWS. You solely pay for the utilization of AWS assets or providers, similar to EC2 situations, Amazon Workspace desktops, or Amazon App Stream 2.0. In the event you plan to make use of DCV with on-premises servers, verify the listing of license resellers on our web site.