Today, NICE DCV has a new name. So long NICE DCV, welcome Amazon DCV. Today, with the 2024.0 release, along with enhancements and bug fixes, NICE DCV is rebranded to Amazon DCV.

The new name is now also used to consistently refer to the DCV protocol powering AWS managed services such as Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces.

What is Amazon DCV
Amazon DCV is a high-performance remote display protocol. It lets you securely deliver remote desktops and application streaming from any cloud or data center to any device, over varying network conditions. By using Amazon DCV with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), you can run graphics-intensive applications remotely on EC2 instances. You can then stream the results to more modest client machines, which eliminates the need for expensive dedicated workstations.

Amazon DCV supports both Windows and major flavors of Linux operating systems on the server side, providing you flexibility to fit your organization’s needs. The client-side that receives the desktops and application streamings could be the native DCV client for Windows, Linux, or macOS or web browsers. The DCV remote server and client transfer only encrypted pixels, not data, so no confidential data is downloaded from the DCV server. When you choose to use Amazon DCV on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with EC2 instances, you can take advantage of the AWS 108 Availability Zones across the 33 geographic Regions and 31 local zones, allowing your remote streaming services to scale globally.

Since Amazon acquired NICE 8 years ago, we’ve witnessed a diverse range of customers adopting DCV. From general-purpose users visualizing business applications to industry-specific professionals, DCV has proven to be versatile. For instance, artists have employed DCV to access powerful cloud workstations for their digital content creation and rendering tasks. In the healthcare sector, medical imaging professionals have used DCV for remote visualization and analysis of patient data. Geoscientists have used DCV to analyze reservoir simulation results, while engineers in manufacturing have used it to visualize computational fluid dynamics experiments. The education and IT support industries have benefited from collaborative sessions in DCV, in which multiple users can share a single desktop.

Notable customers include Quantic Dream, an award-winning game development studio that has harnessed DCV to create high-resolution, low-latency streaming services for their artists and developers. Tally Solutions, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) services provider, has employed DCV to securely stream its ERP software to thousands of customers. Volkswagen has used DCV to provide remote access to computer-aided engineering (CAE) applications for over 1,000 automotive engineers. Amazon Kuiper, an initiative to bring broadband connectivity to underserved communities, has used DCV for designing complex chips.

Within AWS, DCV has been adopted by several services to provide managed solutions to customers. For example, AppStream 2.0 uses DCV to offer secure, reliable, and scalable application streaming. Additionally, since 2020, Amazon WorkSpaces Streaming Protocol (WSP), which is built on DCV and optimized for high performance, is available for Amazon WorkSpaces customers. Today, we’re also phasing out the WSP name and replacing it with DCV. Going forward, you will have DCV as a primary protocol choice in Amazon WorkSpaces.

What’s new with version 2024.0
Amazon DCV 2024.0 introduces several fixes and enhancements for improved performance, security, and ease of use. The 2024.0 release now supports the latest Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, bringing the latest security updates and extended long-term support to simplify system maintenance. The DCV client on Ubuntu 24.04 has built in support for Wayland, offering better graphical rendering efficiency and enhanced application isolation. Additionally, DCV 2024.0 now enables the QUIC UDP protocol by default, allowing clients to benefit from an optimized streaming experience. The release also introduces the capability to blank the Linux host screen when a remote user is connected, preventing local access and interaction with the remote session.

How to get started
The easiest way to test DCV is to spin up a WorkSpaces instance from the WorkSpaces console, selecting one of the DCV-powered bundles, or creating an AppStream session. For this demo however, I want to show you how to install DCV server on an EC2 instance.

I installed DCV server on two servers running on Amazon EC2, one running Windows Server 2022 and one running Ubuntu 24.04. I also installed the client on my macOS laptop. The client and server packages are available to download on our website. For both servers, make sure the security group authorizes inbound connection on UDP or TCP port 8443, the default port DCV uses.

The Windows installation is straightforward: start the msi file, select Next at each step and voilà. It was installed in less time than it took me to write this sentence.

The installation on Linux deserves a bit more care. Amazon Machine Images (AMI) for EC2 servers don’t include any desktop or graphical components. As a prerequisite, I had to install the X Window System and a window manager, and configure X to let users connect and start a graphical user interface session on the server. Fortunately, all these steps are well documented. Here is a summary of the commands I used.

# install desktop packages 
$ sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop

# install a desktop manager 
$ sudo apt install gdm3

# reboot
$ sudo reboot

After the reboot, I installed the DCV server package

# Install the server 
$ sudo apt install ./nice-dcv-server_2024.0.17794-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb
$ sudo apt install ./nice-xdcv_2024.0.625-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb

# (optional) install the DCV web viewer to allow clients to connect from a web browser
$ sudo apt install ./nice-dcv-web-viewer_2024.0.17794-1_amd64.ubuntu2404.deb

Because my server had no GPU, I also followed these steps to install X11 Dummy driver and configure X11 to use it.

Then, I started the service:

$ sudo systemctl enable dcvserver.service 
$ sudo systemctl start dcvserver.service 
$ sudo systemctl status dcvserver.service 

I created a user at the operating system level and assigned a password and a home directory. Then, I checked my setup on the server before trying to connect from the server.

$ sudo dcv list-sessions
There are no sessions available.

$ sudo dcv create-session console --type virtual --owner seb

$ sudo dcv list-sessions
Session: 'console' (owner:seb type:virtual)

Once my server configuration was ready, I started the DCV client on my laptop. I only had to enter the IP address of the server and the username and password of the user to initiate a session.

On my laptop, I opened a new DCV client window and connected to the other EC2 server. After a few seconds, I was able to remotely work with the Windows and the Ubuntu machine running in the cloud.

In this example, I focus on installing Amazon DCV on a single EC2 instance. However, when building your own service infrastructure, you may want to explore the other components that are part of the DCV offering: Amazon DCV Session Manager, Amazon DCV Access Console, and Amazon DCV Connection Gateway.

Pricing and availability
Amazon DCV is free of charges when used on AWS. You only pay for the usage of AWS resources or services, such as EC2 instances, Amazon Workspace desktops, or Amazon App Stream 2.0. If you plan to use DCV with on-premises servers, check the list of license resellers on our website.

Now go build your own servers with DCV.

— seb