Use Amazon EC2 for cost-efficient cloud gaming with pay-as-you-go pricing

This repository contains the full source code that is used in the blog post Use Amazon EC2 for cost-efficient cloud gaming with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Solution Overview

Prerequisites

• An AWS account
• Installed and authenticated AWS CLI (authenticate with an IAM user or an AWS STS Security Token)
• Installed and setup AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)
• Installed Node.js, TypeScript and git
• AWS EC2 KeyPair (.pem)

Let’s get you started

1. Make sure you completed the prerequisites above and cloned this repo.

git clone git@github.com:aws-samples/cloud-gaming-on-ec2-instances

2. Open the repository in your preferred IDE and familiarize yourself with the structure of the project.

.
├── cdk             CDK code that defines the environment
└── img             Images used in this README

3. Install dependencies

node.js dependencies are declared in a package.json. This project contains a package.json file in the cdk folder.

Navigate into cdk folder it and run npm install

4. Configure your environment

Before you can deploy the stack, you need to review the config. Navigate to cdk/bin/cloud-gaming-on-ec2.ts and review / update the following parameters:

• ACCOUNT: The account id you want to deploy the stack in
• REGION: The region you want to deploy the stack in
• NICE_DCV_DISPLAY_DRIVER_URL: The download URL of the NICE DCV Virtual Display Driver for EC2. You can leave this unless the link is broken or you want to use a different version.
• NICE_DCV_SERVER_URL: The download URL of the NICE DCV Server. You can leave this unless the link is broken or you want to use a different version.
• InstanceSize: Sets the size of the EC2 Instance. Defaults to g5.xlarge, g4dn.xlarge, and g4ad.xlarge respectively.
• associateElasticIp: Controls if an Elastic IP address will be created and added to the EC2 instance.
• EC2_KEYPAIR_NAME: The name of the EC2 key pair you will use to connect to the instance. Make sure to have access to the respective .pem file.
• VOLUME_SIZE_GIB: The size of the root EBS volume. Around 20 GB will be used for the Windows installation, the rest will be available for your software. Note: Some EC2 Instance Types include instance store which can be initalized.
• OPEN_PORTS: Access from these ports will be allowed. Per default this will only allow access for NICE DCV on port 8443
• ALLOW_INBOUND_CIDR: Access from this CIDR range will be allowed. Per default this will allow access from /0, but I recommend to restrict this to your IP address only.
• GRID_SW_CERT_URL: (Only for g4dn/g5 instances) The NVIDIA driver requires a certificate file which can be downloaded from Amazon S3. You can leave this unless the link is broken or you want to use a different certificate.
• tags: A list of resource tags that will be added to every taggable resource in the stack.
• SEVEN_ZIP_URL: Update to the latest 7zip .msi version as it is required for the automated NVIDIA driver install.
• CHROME_URL: Installs Google Chrome Enterprise x64.

5. Deploy your application

The CDK code is written in TypeScript, an extension to JavaScript that adds static types and other useful features.

To run the CDK code, navigate to the cdk folder and run the following commands

cdk bootstrap
cdk deploy <StackName>

After bootstrapping the required resources for the CDK with cdk bootstrap you can then deploy the template with cdk deploy <StackName>. Bootstrapping is only require once.

<StackName> can be either CloudGamingOnG4DN, CloudGamingOnG4AD or CloudGamingOnG5, depending on the instance type you want to use.

The following table gives an overview over the expected graphics performance, expressed as 3DMark Time Spy scores.

Instance Type	3DMark Score	On-demand Price (us-east-1, USD, 02/23)	Price-performance (3DMark points / $)
g4dn.xlarge	4300	$0.71	6056
g4dn.2xlarge	4800	$1.12	4286
g4dn.4xlarge	6000	$1.94	3093
g4ad.xlarge	5100	$0.56	9107
g4ad.2xlarge	6600	$0.91	7253
g4ad.4xlarge	7600	$1.60	4750
g5.xlarge	6800	$1.19	5714
g5.2xlarge	10200	$1.58	6456
g5.4xlarge	13000	$2.36	5508

Stack completion usually takes 8-15 minutes.

6. Create your personal gaming AMI

Follow the instructions in the associated blog post Use Amazon EC2 for cost-efficient cloud gaming with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Useful CLI commands

List EC2 key pairs

aws ec2 describe-key-pairs --query 'KeyPairs[*].KeyName' --output table

Create a new key pair and the PEM file to store your private key

KEY_NAME=GamingOnEc2
aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text > $KEY_NAME.pem

Start / Stop an EC2 instance

aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids INSTANCE_ID
aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids INSTANCE_ID

Creates an Amazon Machine Image from an EC2 instance

aws ec2 create-image --instance-id <YOUR_INSTANCE_ID> --name <THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_AMI>

Starts a new EC2 instance from a launch template

aws ec2 run-instances --image-id <YOUR_AMI_ID> --launch-template LaunchTemplateName=<LAUNCH_TEMPLATE_NAME> --query "Instances[*].[InstanceId, PublicIpAddress]" --output table

List your instances

aws ec2 describe-instances --query "Reservations[*].Instances[*].[ImageId, InstanceType, VpcId, State.Name, PublicIpAddress, LaunchTime]" --output table

Deploy all stacks at once, without rollback and dont require approval for IAM resources

cdk deploy --all --no-rollback --concurrency=3 --require-approval=never

List all stacks

cdk list

Security

See CONTRIBUTING for more information.

License

This library is licensed under the MIT-0 License. See the LICENSE file.