Prerequisites for Windows Amazon DCV server on Amazon EC2 instances

This topic describes how to configure your Windows Amazon EC2 instance before you install the Amazon DCV server. If you're not installing the Amazon DCV server on an Amazon EC2 Windows instance, skip these prerequisites.

Prerequisites for all instances

From version 2024.0 the Windows version of Amazon DCV has as a requirement Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2022 instead of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017.

The best practice is that Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio are installed before the Amazon DCV Server installation by the server administrator. The 2024.0 Amazon DCV MSI installer checks for the dependency and if they are not found, will attempt to install the requirement before the Amazon DCV installation. This behavior is a fallback mechanism which will be removed in future release. Administrators that use automation for the installation should work towards updating their automations to install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio before the Amazon DCV server. Also please note that Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable may reboot the host as part of the installation.

Prerequisites for accelerated computing instances

Prerequisites for GPU graphics instances

If you're using a GPU graphics instance (for example, a G2, G3, G4dn, G4ad, or G5 instance), we recommend that you install and configure the appropriate NVIDIA or AMD GPU drivers. The GPU drivers allow for the following:

For instructions on how to install NVIDIA GPU drivers on your GPU graphics instance, see the following topics in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

For more information about Amazon EC2 G4ad instances, see the Deep dive on the new Amazon EC2 G4ad instances blog post.

Prerequisites for other accelerated computing instances

If you're using an accelerated computing instance that isn't a GPU graphics instance (for example a P2, P3, or P3dn instance), we recommend that you install and configure the appropriate NVIDIA GPU drivers. The NVIDIA GPU drivers enable hardware acceleration for H.264 video streaming encoding.

For instructions on how to install NVIDIA GPU drivers on your accelerated computing instance, see Public NVIDIA Drivers in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Installing the NVIDIA GPU drivers on an accelerated computing instance doesn't enhance server monitor limits or resolutions. To add the additional server monitor resolution support, you can install the NVIDIA GRID drivers. For more information, see NVIDIA vGPU Software on the NVIDIA website.

Prerequisites for other instance families

For instances other than accelerated computing instances, we recommend that you install the Amazon DCV Virtual Display driver if you are on Windows 2016 or are running a Amazon DCV server version before 2023.1. This includes instances in the general purpose, compute-optimized, memory-optimized, and storage-optimized instance families.

Installing the Amazon DCV Virtual Display driver enables the following:

You can't manage server monitors attached by the Amazon DCV server using Windows Control Panel.