AMI Usage Guide: NICE DCV for Ubuntu (GPU with AMD 3D Drivers)

This guide assists with using the NI SP “Ubuntu 18 Desktop – NICE DCV for 3D AMD-based graphics instances” AMI from the AWS Marketplace.

Please follow these steps below to use the AMI – in case preferred have a look at our NI SP Linux AMIs Walk Through Video:

  • Make sure the instance security groups allow inbound traffic to TCP and UDP port 8443 and TCP 22.
  • Configure the instance to have the role to access the license file as per https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dcv/latest/adminguide/setting-up-license.html to remove the unlicensed warning
  • Connect to your remote machine with ssh -i ubuntu@<public_ip>
  • Set the password for the user “ubuntu” with sudo passwd ubuntu. This is the password you will use to log in to DCV.
  • Connect to your remote machine with the NICE DCV native client entering the public_ip or web client using https://<public_ip>:8443

Please note that DCV on AMD GPUs presently support consoled sessions only. Virtual sessions support multiple high-performant 3D desktops for different users sharing a nVidia GPU.

Connecting to DCV with QUIC/UDP Protocol

The DCV QUIC/UDP protocol offers significantly higher framerates e.g. attractive for media artists or in difficult network conditions with higher latencies.

  • Download and install the NICE DCV native client from https://download.nice-dcv.com/ for your OS in case not yet installed. For Windows a portable version is available as well.
  • Start the DCV client -> Click “Connection Settings” -> Click “Advanced” -> Select “QUIC” in pulldown menu -> Click ok.
    The setting should look similar to this:
  • Connect to your remote machine by the entering your FQDN or external IP address in the address field.
  • Authenticate using username and password you can find in the EC2 console when clicking the “Connect” option of the instance.

Please note: You can switch to the standard TCP based DCV protocol in the “Connection Settings” step above to compare performance of both protocols – TCP and QUIC/UDP.

Here is our Walk Through Video guiding through the CentOS Linux AMI installation and usage process:

Please let us know if you have any questions via our contact form. More background on NICE DCV and NICE DCV Tips and Tricks.