As we gear up for an exciting 2023, our team is diligently working on several new features and enhancements for DCV that we believe you’ll find beneficial. However, it’s important to pause and reflect on the milestones achieved with DCV in 2022.
A Multifaceted Display Protocol
Over the years, users have shared that DCV is not only a robust and efficient display protocol but also a versatile component. This adaptability allows it to serve various workloads across multiple environments, making it advantageous for diverse industries. We have utilized this flexibility to enhance remote desktop and application streaming capabilities in several AWS services, including Amazon WorkSpaces, Amazon AppStream 2.0, Amazon Nimble Studio, Amazon WorkSpaces Web, AWS Robomaker, and the GUI connect feature in AWS Systems Manager.
Customers like Ford, Samsung, Hulu, and Project Orion have successfully harnessed the power of DCV to provide secure remote access to graphic workstations in both cloud and on-premises settings. Service providers and independent software vendors (ISVs), such as Flaneer and SevenHills with their Studio in the Cloud featuring Unreal Engine 5, have also integrated DCV into their online offerings.
Among the notable projects in 2022 was TallyPrime on AWS, where Tally Solutions launched a service enabling users to remotely access their TallyPrime application anytime, anywhere. Within a year of its introduction, this DCV-powered solution successfully provided virtual office capabilities to over 10,000 users, exemplifying how ISVs can utilize DCV technology to transform traditional desktop applications into cloud services on AWS.
Moreover, in 2022, AWS End User Computing (EUC) unified its services by adopting DCV as the underlying streaming technology for Amazon WorkSpaces Streaming Protocol. This transformation allowed us to enhance audio and video performance significantly while delivering a consistent desktop experience. As of now, all fully-managed AWS EUC services operate on the same display protocol technology, ensuring that all EUC customers can benefit from future advancements we develop for DCV.
A Year Full of Innovations
2022 was undeniably a busy year, with the integration of DCV into Amazon WorkSpaces marking just the beginning of our initiatives. We also rolled out several new features and performance upgrades. In February, we introduced support for redirection of Xbox and DualShock game controllers with DCV 2022.0. We added the capability to stream sessions with improved color accuracy (YUV 4:4:4), crucial for users needing a perceptually lossless experience in dynamic content, such as video production and computer-aided design. Additionally, macOS clients can now fully utilize high pixel-density Retina displays.
By June, with DCV 2022.1, we enhanced the user interface for a better collaborative experience. Users now receive notifications when someone joins their session and can see who else is connected. Session owners can even disconnect users if necessary.
November brought the release of version 2022.2, which included several highly requested features:
- Users can now select which local displays to use for full-screen remote sessions on Windows hosts.
- Printer redirection for macOS and Linux clients is now available.
- Time zone redirection allows remote Windows hosts to adopt the client’s local time zone, alleviating potential confusion when using calendar applications.
Under-the-Hood Enhancements
We expanded support for popular Linux distributions, such as CentOS Stream 8, Ubuntu 22.04, and Rocky Linux 8.5. Moreover, we integrated AWS Graviton processors for the DCV Session Manager broker, providing customers with an optimal price-performance ratio in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).
In 2022, we also introduced the ability to hot update TLS certificates, a vital feature for improving operational excellence and tightening security. Support for IPv6 and the option to specify the listening network interface for the DCV server and DCV Connection Gateway were also added. The DCV Web Client and Web Client SDK transitioned to the new open-source Cloudscape design system, ensuring a consistent experience between browser-based DCV sessions and the standard AWS UI. Lastly, we introduced new metrics to the DCV Gateway, enabling administrators to monitor their gateway instances more effectively.
Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon AppStream 2.0
As a foundational technology for both Amazon WorkSpaces and AppStream 2.0, DCV played a crucial role in several of their launches. Notably:
- UDP streaming for the Windows native client in Amazon AppStream 2.0, which leverages DCV’s UDP support for improved streaming quality in less-than-ideal network conditions, is particularly beneficial for users with high latency.
- Webcam redirection for Linux desktops and applications was introduced in Amazon AppStream 2.0, expanding capabilities previously available only for Windows server applications.
- We also implemented certificate-based authentication for both Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces, streamlining access to domain-joined desktops and application streaming sessions without requiring separate password prompts for Active Directory.
The Year of the Linux Desktop?
After decades of jokes about each year being the “Year of the Linux Desktop,” 2022 may have indeed marked the emergence of the Linux Desktop in the Cloud. Significantly, Canonical and Red Hat launched Linux desktop offerings on AWS, with DCV playing an integral role in both cases. Our commitment to delivering top-notch remote desktop and application streaming service remains steadfast, reflecting our roots in the HPC community.
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