How to build Graphics Workstation on Amazon EC2 G4 Instances

This document explains how to build Graphics Workstation on Amazon EC2 G4 Instances. Here use the GPU graphics instance G4 with Windows Server 2016 as example.

Install NICE DCV Server

Follow up guide Install NICE DCV Server

Install the NVIDIA GPU drivers

NVIDIA GPU drivers enable the following:
- DirectX and OpenGL hardware acceleration for applications
- Hardware acceleration for H.264 video streaming encoding
- Customizable server monitor resolutions
- Increased maximum resolution for server monitors— up to 4096x2160
- Increased number of server monitors

The Installing NVIDIA drivers on Windows instances guide

Choice NVIDIA drivers that can be used with GPU-based instances

Tesla drivers: primarily for compute workloads, such as parallelized floating-point calculations for machine learning and fast Fourier transforms for high performance computing applications.
GRID drivers: provide optimal performance for professional visualization applications that render content such as 3D models or high-resolution videos. You can configure GRID drivers to support two modes.
- Quadro Virtual Workstations provide access to four 4K displays per GPU.
- GRID vApps provide RDSH App hosting capabilities.
Gaming drivers: optimizations for gaming and upport a single 4K display per GPU.

The G4 instance support for all Tesla driver, GRID driver and Gaming driver.

Installation options
- Option 1: AMIs with the NVIDIA drivers installed from Marketplace. This is can be used for AWS global region
- Option 2: Public NVIDIA drivers: install the public drivers and bring your own license
- Option 3: GRID drivers (G3 and G4 instances): These license are available to AWS customers only
- Option 4: NVIDIA gaming drivers (G4 instances): These license are available to AWS customers only

Here we use the Option 2 for demo

Install the NVIDIA Tesla Driver

Download driver from https://s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/lxy-sa-software/EC2-G4-Instance/02_Tesla_Driver/442.50-tesla-desktop-winserver-2019-2016-international.exe
Select the Express installation mode
Complete the installation

Optimizing GPU settings ```bash
Open a PowerShell window and navigate to the NVIDIA installation folder.

cd “C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI”

Disable the autoboost feature for all GPUs on the instance.

.\nvidia-smi –auto-boost-default=0

Set all GPU clock speeds to their maximum frequency. G4 instances:

.\nvidia-smi -ac “5001,1590”

![install-nice-dcv-GPU-Setting](/aws-is-how/EC2/media/install-nice-dcv-GPU-Setting.png)

5. Install Windows components

- Click `Server Manager`
- `Add roles and features`
- `Role-based or feature based installation`
- Select local machine from the Server pool
- Server Role screen, keep default setting
- Feature screnn, select `Media Foundation （媒体基础）` and `Quality Windows Audio Video Experience（优质Windows 音频视频体验）`
- Review and Click `Install`
- Restart the Windows

![Server-Manager](/aws-is-how/EC2/media/install-nice-dcv-Server-Manager.png)

![Server-Manager-Feature](/aws-is-how/EC2/media/install-nice-dcv-Server-Manager-Feature.png)

6. Disable the licensing page in the control panel to prevent users from accidentally changing the product type

Run Powershell as Administrator

```bash
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\GridLicensing" -Name "NvCplDisableManageLicensePage" -PropertyType "DWord" -Value "1"

DisableManageLicense

Install GRID driver

Download driver from

https://s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/lxy-sa-software/EC2-G4-Instance/03_Grid_Driver/443.05_grid_win10_64bit_international_whql.exe

Select the Express installation mode
Complete the installation

Disable default display card
Make sure the Driver install correctly

Run Powershell as Administrator

# Open a PowerShell window and navigate to the NVIDIA installation folder.
cd "C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI"

.\nvidia-smi.exe

.\nvidia-smi.exe -q

Output sample

Telsa - TCC mode
Grid - WDDM

Tue Sep 22 09:22:32 2020
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 443.05       Driver Version: 443.05       CUDA Version: 10.2     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name            TCC/WDDM | Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  Tesla T4           WDDM  | 00000000:00:1E.0 Off |                    0 |
| N/A   40C    P0    27W /  70W |    435MiB / 15360MiB |      1%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0       920    C+G   C:\Windows\System32\dwm.exe                N/A      |
|    0      2068    C+G   ...t_cw5n1h2txyewy\ShellExperienceHost.exe N/A      |
|    0      2568    C+G   ...dows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy\SearchUI.exe N/A      |
|    0      2800    C+G   ... Files\NICE\DCV\Server\bin\dcvagent.exe N/A      |
|    0      2944    C+G   C:\Windows\explorer.exe                    N/A      |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Check the double display

double-display

Disable the default display card

disable-display-card

High Display Resolution

Test the 3D graphic acceleration

https://s3.cn-north-1.amazonaws.com.cn/lxy-sa-software/EC2-G4-Instance/05_Benchmark/FurMark_1.21.2.0_Setup.exe

3D-test

Reference

Installing NVIDIA drivers on Windows instances