Amazon AppStream 2.0 features

Amazon AppStream 2.0 lets you move your desktop applications to AWS, without rewriting them. It’s easy to install your applications on AppStream 2.0, set launch configurations, and make your applications available to users. AppStream 2.0 offers a wide selection of virtual machine options so that you can select the instance type that best matches your application requirements, and set the auto-scale parameters so that you can easily meet the needs of your end users. AppStream 2.0 allows you to launch applications in your own network, which means your applications can interact with your existing AWS resources.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 enables you to quickly and easily install, test, and update your applications using the image builder. Any application that runs on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server 2019 is supported, and you don’t need to make any modifications. When your testing is complete, you can set application launch configurations, configure default user settings, and publish your image for users to access. Using managed AppStream 2.0 image updates, you can keep your images up to date with the latest Windows operating system updates, driver updates, and AppStream 2.0 agent software

Amazon AppStream 2.0 runs your applications on virtual machines (VMs) called streaming instances, which provide the GPU, CPU, memory, storage, and networking capacity you need. With AppStream 2.0, you can choose from a selection of them to optimize the performance of your applications, and reduce your overall costs. You can use General Purpose, Compute Optimized, Memory Optimized, Graphics Design, Graphics Pro, and Graphics G4 families based on your use case. Users access all their applications from the same streaming instance, and a streaming instance is assigned to only one user at any time.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 offers Graphics Design, Graphics Pro and Graphics G4 instance families.

Graphics Design instances are ideal for delivering applications such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Autodesk Revit, and Siemens NX that rely on hardware acceleration of DirectX, OpenGL, or OpenCL. Powered by AMD FirePro S7150x2 Server GPUs and equipped with AMD Multiuser GPU technology, instances start from 2 vCPU, 7.5 GiB system memory, and 1 GiB graphics memory, to 16 vCPUs, 61 GiB system memory, and 8 GiB graphics memory.

Graphics g4dn instances are based on the EC2 G4 family. Amazon EC2 g4dn instances deliver the industry’s most cost-effective and versatile GPU instance for running graphics-intensive applications on AWS. G4dn instances provide the latest generation NVIDIA T4 GPUs, AWS custom Intel Cascade Lake CUs, up to 100 Gbps of networking throughput, and up to 1.8 TB of local NVMe storage. These instances are ideal for streaming graphics intensive applications that rely on NVIDIA GPU libraries such as CUDA using AppStream 2.0. AppStream 2.0 offers six different g4dn instance sizes, ranging from 4 vCPUs and 16 GiB of memory to 64 vCPUs and 256 GiB of memory

The Graphics Pro instance family offers three different instance types to support the most demanding graphics applications. Powered by NVIDIA Tesla M60 GPUs with 2048 parallel processing cores, there are three Graphics Pro instances types starting from 16 vCPUs, 122 GiB system memory, and 8 GiB graphics memory, to 64 vCPUs, 488 GiB system memory, and 32 GiB graphics memory. These instance types are ideal for graphic workloads that need a massive amount of parallel processing power for 3D rendering, visualization, and video encoding, including applications such as Petrel from Schlumberger Software, Landmark's DecisionSpace, or MotionDSP's Ikena. For more information on available instance types and pricing, see Amazon AppStream 2.0 pricing.

With Amazon AppStream 2.0, your desktop applications can be launched inside an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). You can use VPC security groups to provide granular access control to streaming instances, and to manage users' access to the resources in your VPC, such as your databases, file shares, license servers, and application servers. You can also specify how your desktop applications access the public internet, just as you would with any other resource in your VPC.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 supports federated sign-in using SAML 2.0. Users can sign in to AppStream 2.0 using their existing credentials, and start streaming applications. As an administrator, you can use your existing user directory to control end-user access to applications available via AppStream 2.0. You can quickly add or remove access for users or groups, restrict access based on user locations, and enable multi-factor authentication. You can enable federated access and controls via any SAML 2.0 compliant identity provider.

Your Amazon AppStream 2.0 streaming instances can connect to your Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain. This allows you to apply your existing AD policies to your streaming instances, and provides your users with single sign on access to Intranet sites, file shares, and network printers from within their applications. Your users are authenticated using a SAML 2.0 provider of your choice, and can access applications that require a connection to your AD domain.

Your users can use their Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) smart card, and other types of smart cards, to sign in to an AppStream 2.0 streaming instance that is joined to a Microsoft Active Directory domain. Smart cards are also supported for in-session authentication for streaming applications. When this feature is enabled and your user streams using the Windows native client, AppStream 2.0 redirects smart card requests from the streaming instance to a smart card reader that is connected to the user’s local computer. The smart card and smart card reader remain accessible to both the streaming instance and the user’s local computer.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 allows you to monitor the utilization of your AppStream 2.0 fleet resources using Amazon CloudWatch metrics. You can see the size of your fleet, the number of instances you have running, and the available capacity for new connections. You can also track utilization over time, which helps you ensure that your fleet is the correct size. Using CloudWatch, you can set alarms to notify you when there is insufficient capacity to support your users, and to react to changes in your fleet.

AppStream 2.0 allows you to automatically scale the size of your fleet to match the supply of running instances to user demand. Each running instance in a fleet can be used by only one user at a time, which means the size of your fleet determines the number of users who can stream concurrently. Scaling policies adjust the size of your fleet automatically based on utilization metrics so that you can optimize the number of running instances to reduce your streaming costs. Each new fleet that you create using the AppStream 2.0 console is configured with default scale out and scale in policies, which you can customize. You can also create your own scaling policies for each of your fleets.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 includes APIs that you can use to easily integrate and extend the service. The APIs enable you to create, update, and delete AppStream 2.0 resources, and provide detailed information about resource states. You can create URLs for administrators to connect to their image builders to install applications, and create URLs for users to access their AppStream 2.0 applications.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 allows you to access your desktop applications from HTML5-capable browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. No plug-ins are needed. You can also access your desktop applications using the AppStream 2.0 Windows Client to use dual monitors and USB peripherals such as 3D mice. The Windows Client also supports keyboard shortcuts, such as Alt + Tab, clipboard shortcuts, and function keys. The Windows Client and Chromium-based web browsers support real-time audio-video (AV) when connecting to AppStream 2.0 sessions.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 offers multiple options for persistent file storage to allow users to store and retrieve files between their application streaming sessions. You can use a home folder backed by Amazon S3, Google Drive for G Suite, or Microsoft OneDrive for Business. Each of these are accessed from the my files tab within an active AppStream 2.0 streaming session, and content can be saved or opened directly from the File menu in most apps.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 offers an intuitive user interface, making it easy to control your experience. You can use the application-centric view, or use the standard desktop experience. You can run multiple applications and easily switch and interact with them. You can copy and paste between applications and your local machine, quickly upload or download files, and print to your local or network printer. You can also listen to audio output from applications, and control the bandwidth and fidelity for the experience. With the AppStream 2.0 Windows Client, your applications integrate with your local machine, providing a seamless experience between locally installed applications and remote applications from AppStream 2.0.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 uses NICE DCV technology to provide secure, high-performance access to your applications. NICE DCV delivers a fluid interactive experience for business, design, engineering, and software development applications. It delivers a secure pixel stream to your end users and always adjusts to network conditions to provide an optimal end-user experience. NICE DCV secures both pixels and end-user inputs using end-to-end AES-256 encryption.

With Amazon AppStream 2.0, your application streams and user input flows through a secure streaming gateway on AWS over HTTPS. Streaming instances are not directly accessible from the internet, and users can only access their applications through the streaming gateway after being authenticated.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is available in multiple AWS regions globally. You can host your AppStream 2.0 resources in multiple AWS regions, and direct users to the closest AWS region for the best end-user experience.