Tag Archives: Amazon AppStream

How to use Amazon AppStream 2.0 to reduce your bastion host attack surface

2018-05-02 Chaim Landau

Post Syndicated from Chaim Landau original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-use-amazon-appstream-2-0-to-reduce-your-bastion-host-attack-surface/

To help protect their assets, many security-conscious enterprises require their system administrators to go through a “bastion” (or “jump”) host to gain administrative access to backend systems in protected or sensitive network segments.

A bastion host is a special-purpose instance that hosts a minimal number of administrative applications, such as RDP for Windows or Putty for Linux-based distributions. All other unnecessary services are removed. The host is typically placed in a segregated network (or “DMZ”), and is often protected with multi-factor authentication (MFA) and monitored with auditing tools. And most enterprises require that the access trail to the bastion host be auditable.

In this post, I demonstrate the use of Amazon AppStream 2.0 as a hardened and auto-scaled bastion host solution, and show how it could reduce the attack surface by stripping away the underlying OS and exposing only the necessary tools to system administrators that need access to protected network segments.

Prerequisites

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with a dedicated subnet for AppStream 2.0.
An existing Active Directory (AD) domain. This may be on premises, on AWS EC2 for Windows, or AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory used as a user directory.
Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
A Linux or Windows instance for which AppStream 2.0 will be acting as a bastion host.

Solution overview

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that provides users instant access to their desktop applications from anywhere by using an HTML5-compatible desktop browser. When a user requests access to an application, AppStream 2.0 uses a base image to deploy a streaming instance and destroys the instance after the user closes their session. This ensures the same consistent experience during each logon.

You can use AppStream 2.0 as a bastion solution to enable your system administrators to manage their environment without giving them a full bastion host. Because AppStream 2.0 freshly builds instances each time a user requests access, a compromised instance will only last for the duration of a user session. As soon as the user closes their session and the Disconnect Timeout period is reached, AppStream 2.0 terminates the instance and, with it, you’ve reduced your risks of compromised instances.

You will also potentially reduce your costs because AppStream 2.0 has built-in auto-scaling to increase and decrease capacity based on user demand. It allows you to take advantage of the pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for what you use.

High-level AppStream 2.0 architecture

The diagram below depicts a high-level AppStream 2.0 architecture used as a bastion host for servers in another VPC.

There are three VPCs shown: AppStream 2.0 VPC, Bastion host VPC, and application VPC. The AppStream 2.0 VPC is an AWS-owned VPC where the AppStream 2.0 maintains its infrastructure. Customers are not responsible for this VPC and have no access to it. AppStream 2.0 builds each streaming instance with two Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI); one in the AppStream 2.0 VPC and one in the VPC where you choose to deploy your AppStream 2.0 instances. The third VPC is the application VPC where you would typically keep your backend servers.

The diagram also depicts the end-user process to access the AppStream 2.0 environment, which works as follow:

Using an HTML5 desktop browser the user logs on to a Single Sign-On URL. This authenticates the user against the corporate directory using SAML 2.0 federation and with optional MFA.
After successful authentication, the user will see a list of provisioned applications.
The user can launch applications, such as RDP and Putty, which are only visible within the browser and with its underlying OS hidden. The user is then able to connect to the backend systems over the ports that were opened through security groups. The user logs off and AppStream 2.0 destroys the instance used for the session.

Figure 1: Architecture diagram

Step-by-step instructions

This walk-through assumes you have created the following resources as prerequisites.

A single VPC with a /23 CIDR range and two private subnets in two AZs.

Note: “private” subnet refers to a subnet that has no internet gateway (IGW) attached.
- Bastion Subnets — used for the AppStream 2.0 instances that will be hosting the bastion applications.
- Apps Subnets — used for the servers for which the AppStream 2.0 instances will be acting as a bastion host.
  
  Figure 2: Screen shot of bastion and apps subnets
A peering connection to a VPC where the corporate Active Directory resides and with updated routing tables. This is only necessary if your AD resides in a different VPC.
Two EC2 instances with private IP addresses in the app subnet.

Phase 1: Create the DHCP Options Set

For the AppStream 2.0 instances to be able to join the corporate domain, they need to have their DNS entries point to the corporate domain controller(s). To accomplish this, you need to create a DHCP Options Set and assign it to the VPC:

Sign in to the AWS console, and then select VPC Dashboard > DHCP Option Sets > Create DHCP options set.
Give the DHCP Options Set a name, enter the domain name and DNS server(s) of your corporate domain controller(s), and then select Yes, Create.
Select your VPC Dashboard > your VPC > Actions > Edit DHCP Options Set.
Select the DHCP Options Set created in the previous step, and then select Save.

Figure 3: The “Edit DHCP Options Set” dialog

Phase 2: Create the AppStream 2.0 Stack

An AppStream 2.0 stack consists of a fleet, user access policies, and storage configuration. To create a stack, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Stack > Create Stack.
Give the stack a name, and then select Next.
Enable Home Folders, if you want persistent storage, and then select Review.

Figure 4: The “Enable Home Folders” dialog
Select Create.

Phase 3: Create the AppsStream 2.0 Directory Configuration

First create a directory configuration so you can join the AppStream 2.0 instances to an Organizational Unit (OU) in your corporate directory.

Note: AppStream 2.0 instances must be placed in an OU and can’t reside in the Computer Container.

To create a directory configuration, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Directory Configs > Create Directory Config.
Enter the following Directory Config information:
- Directory name: The FQDN of your corporate domain.
- Service Account Name: The account AppStream 2.0 uses to join the instances to the corporate domain. The required service account privileges are documented here.
- Organizational Unit (OU): The OUs where AppStream 2.0 will create your instances. You can add additional OUs by clicking the plus (+) sign.
Select Next, and then select Create.

Create Security Groups

Now, create AWS security groups for your AppStream 2.0 instances and backend servers.

BastionHostSecurityGroup

For your AppStream 2.0 instances, you must attach a “BastionHostSecurityGroup” in order to communicate to the backend servers. This security group is only used as a “source” by the security groups the backend servers are attached to and, therefore, they don’t require any inbound ports to be opened.

To create a security group, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select VPC > Security Groups > Create Security Group.
Give your “BastionHostSecurityGroup” Security Group a name, select the VPC where you will place the AppStream 2.0 instances, and then select Yes, Create.

BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup

For your backend servers, you must attach a “BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup” that allows incoming traffic from the AppStream 2.0 instance. Unlike the “BastionHostSecurityGroup”, this one requires open inbound ports.

Sign in to the AWS console and select VPC > Security Groups > Create Security Group.
Give your “BastionHostAccessSecurityGroup” security group a name, select the correct VPC, and then select Yes, Create.
In the Security Group console, select the newly created security group, select the Inbound Rule tab, and then select Edit.
Add rules to open port 3389 and 22, use the previously-created security group as the source, and then select Save.

Figure 5: Opening ports 3389 and 22

Note: In addition to security groups, you can place Network ACLs (NACLs) around the subnet you use for AppStream 2.0 as an additional layer of security. The main differences between security groups and NACLs are that security groups are mandatory and you apply them to the instance level, while you apply NACLs to the subnet level and are optional. Another difference worth pointing out is that NACLs are “stateless” while security groups are “stateful.” This means that any port allowed inbound via NACLs will need a corresponding outbound rule. For more information on NACLs, refer to this documentation.

Phase 4: Build the AppStream 2.0 Image

An AppStream 2.0 image contains applications that you can stream to users. AppStream 2.0 uses the image to launch streaming instances that are part of an AppStream 2.0 fleet.

Once you have created the stack, create a custom image to make custom applications available to the users:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Images > Image Builder > Launch Image Builder.
Choose the image you want to use as a starting point, and then select Next. For this example, I chose a generic image from the General Purpose stock.

Figure 6: Choosing an image
Give your image a name, choose the instance family, and then select Next.
Choose the VPC and subnet you want to deploy the AppStream 2.0 instances in.
Select the security group you created for the AppStream 2.0 instances.
Select the directory configuration you created, the OU you want your AppStream 2.0 instances to reside in, and then select Review.
Select Launch.
Once the image is built and in a running state, select the image, and then select Connect. This will open a new browser tab where you’ll be able to connect to and manage the image.
Select Administrator and log in.

Figure 7: Log in as a local administrator
Once logged in as administrator, select the Image Assistant shortcut on the desktop.

Figure 8: The Image Assistant shortcut on the desktop
Add all the applications you want to make available to your users for streaming, and then select Next.

Note: If you need to upload installation or configuration files, you can use the My Files option in the Control menu. Any files uploaded through this method will show up under the X: drive on the Image Builder.

Figure 9: The “Control” menu
If you want to test the applications as a non-privileged user, follow the on-screen instructions to switch the user. Otherwise, select Next.

Figure 10: “Switch User” on-screen instructions
Select Launch to have the Image Assistant optimize the applications.
Give the image a name, and then select Next.
Select Disconnect and Create Image.
Go back to the AppStream 2.0 console and wait for the “snapshotting” to complete and for the image to be in an available state before continuing to the next step.

Phase 5: Create the AppStream 2.0 Fleet

Once you create your Stack and image, you need to create a Fleet and associate it with your Stack.

AppStream 2.0 fleets consist of streaming instances that run the image that you specify. The fleet type determines when your instances run and how you pay for them. You can specify a fleet type when you create a fleet, and you can’t change them once they’ve been created.

To create a fleet, follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Fleets > Create Fleet.
Give your fleet a name, and then select Next.
Select the newly created image, and then select Next.
Choose your preferred settings, and then select Next.

Important: Pay special attention to the Fleet capacity value. Fleet capacity determines the number of running instances you have at any given time, and it affects your costs.

Figure 11: The “Fleet capacity” dialog
Select your VPC, subnet(s), security Group(s), Active Directory settings, and then select Next.
Review the information, and then select Create.

Figure 12: Review your settings

Associate the fleet with the stack

Follow these steps:

Sign in to the AWS console and select AppStream 2.0 > Stacks.
Select the stack, select Actions, and then select Associate Fleet.
Select the fleet, and then select Associate.

Phase 6: Configure ADFS for AppStream 2.0

To have users authenticate against the corporate directory prior to accessing AppStream 2.0, use a Single Sign-On solution. For this demo, I use ADFS. If you choose another solution, follow the instructions that come with the solution. For help with setting up ADFS with AppStream 2.0, review Enabling Identify Federation with ADSF and Amazon Appstream 2.0.

Note: If you use AWS Directory Service for Microsoft AD (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) as your user directory, you can use ADFS by following the ADFS set-up instructions in the blog on How to Enable Your Users to Access Office 365 with AWS Managed Microsoft AD Credentials.

End User Experience

This section shows you what the AppStream 2.0 end user experience is like when connecting to backend Windows and Linux instances.

Note: Make sure you have backend servers to connect to, as indicated in the prerequisites.

Process

Access the ADFS URL that you created as part of the ADFS setup.
Sign in using your corporate credentials.
Select Remote Desktop from the list of applications.
Enter your corporate credentials.
Enter the private IP address of the backend windows instance you want to remote in to.

Figure 13: Enter the private IP address

You’re now logged on to the backend Windows instance through AppStream 2.0.
To test in Linux, open putty. Select the Launch app icon in the Control menu, and then select putty.

Figure 14: The “Control” menu showing putty
Provide the private IP address of a backend Linux host you want to connect to, and then select Open.

Note: For putty to connect to a Linux instance on AWS, you will need to provide a KeyPair. For information on how to configure putty and KeyPairs, refer to this documentation.

You’re now logged on to a backend Linux host through AppStream 2.0.

Monitoring

You can monitor AppStream 2.0 use by default with the following AWS monitoring services.

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources. You can use CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources. For more information, refer to this documentation. Here’s a sample CloudWatch metric showing in-use capacity was 100% at 14:30, which indicates the Fleet capacity may need to be adjusted.

Figure 15: An example CloudWatch metric
AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of your AWS account. With CloudTrail, you can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across your AWS infrastructure. For more information, refer to this documentation. Here’s a sample CloudTrail event. For example, from this event you can see that user Bob logged on to AppStream 2.0 on March 4, 2018, and you can see his source IP.

Figure 16: An example CloudTrail event

Summary

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a cost-effective way to provide administrators with a secure and auditable method to access their backend environments.

The AppStream 2.0 built-in auto-scaling feature offers a pay-as-you-go model, where the number of instances running is based on user demand. This allows you to keep costs down without compromising availability. Another cost-saving benefit of AppStream 2.0 is its underlying infrastructure being managed and maintained by AWS, so you can deploy AppStream 2.0 with minimal effort.

AppStream 2.0 helps with reducing the attack surface by hiding the shell of the streaming OS. This prevents administrators from interacting with executables that haven’t been made available to them through AppStream 2.0.

Another security benefit of AppStream 2.0 is that it destroys streaming instances after each use, reducing risks. This is a good mitigation strategy against compromised instances, as the lifespan of an instance is limited to the length of a user’s session.

AppStream 2.0 support for SAML provides yet another layer of security, allowing you to restrict access to SAML-federated URLs from corporate networks only, as well as the ability to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA).

You can monitor the AppStream 2.0 environment through the use of AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch, allowing you to monitor and trace the usage of AppStream 2.0.

For all of these reasons, AppStream 2.0 makes for a uniquely attractive bastion host solution.

For more information on the technologies mentioned in this blog, see the links below:

If you have comments about this post, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions about anything in this post, start a new thread on the Amazon AppStream 2.0 forum or contact AWS Support.

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AWS Online Tech Talks – April & Early May 2018

2018-04-11 Betsy Chernoff

Post Syndicated from Betsy Chernoff original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-online-tech-talks-april-early-may-2018/

We have several upcoming tech talks in the month of April and early May. Come join us to learn about AWS services and solution offerings. We’ll have AWS experts online to help answer questions in real-time. Sign up now to learn more, we look forward to seeing you.

Note – All sessions are free and in Pacific Time.

April & early May — 2018 Schedule

Compute

April 30, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – Best Practices for Running Amazon EC2 Spot Instances with Amazon EMR (300) – Learn about the best practices for scaling big data workloads as well as process, store, and analyze big data securely and cost effectively with Amazon EMR and Amazon EC2 Spot Instances.

May 1, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – How to Bring Microsoft Apps to AWS (300) – Learn more about how to save significant money by bringing your Microsoft workloads to AWS.

May 2, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – Deep Dive on Amazon EC2 Accelerated Computing (300) – Get a technical deep dive on how AWS’ GPU and FGPA-based compute services can help you to optimize and accelerate your ML/DL and HPC workloads in the cloud.

Containers

April 23, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – New Features for Building Powerful Containerized Microservices on AWS (300) – Learn about how this new feature works and how you can start using it to build and run modern, containerized applications on AWS.

Databases

April 23, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – ElastiCache: Deep Dive Best Practices and Usage Patterns (200) – Learn about Redis-compatible in-memory data store and cache with Amazon ElastiCache.

April 25, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – Intro to Open Source Databases on AWS (200) – Learn how to tap the benefits of open source databases on AWS without the administrative hassle.

DevOps

April 25, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Debug your Container and Serverless Applications with AWS X-Ray in 5 Minutes (300) – Learn how AWS X-Ray makes debugging your Container and Serverless applications fun.

Enterprise & Hybrid

April 23, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – An Overview of Best Practices of Large-Scale Migrations (300) – Learn about the tools and best practices on how to migrate to AWS at scale.

April 24, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – Deploy your Desktops and Apps on AWS (300) – Learn how to deploy your desktops and apps on AWS with Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon AppStream 2.0

IoT

May 2, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – How to Easily and Securely Connect Devices to AWS IoT (200) – Learn how to easily and securely connect devices to the cloud and reliably scale to billions of devices and trillions of messages with AWS IoT.

Machine Learning

April 24, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Automate for Efficiency with Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Translate (200) – Learn how you can increase the efficiency and reach your operations with Amazon Translate and Amazon Transcribe.

April 26, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Perform Machine Learning at the IoT Edge using AWS Greengrass and Amazon Sagemaker (200) – Learn more about developing machine learning applications for the IoT edge.

Mobile

April 30, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – Offline GraphQL Apps with AWS AppSync (300) – Come learn how to enable real-time and offline data in your applications with GraphQL using AWS AppSync.

Networking

May 2, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Taking Serverless to the Edge (300) – Learn how to run your code closer to your end users in a serverless fashion. Also, David Von Lehman from Aerobatic will discuss how they used [email protected] to reduce latency and cloud costs for their customer’s websites.

Security, Identity & Compliance

April 30, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Amazon GuardDuty – Let’s Attack My Account! (300) – Amazon GuardDuty Test Drive – Practical steps on generating test findings.

May 3, 2018 | 09:00 AM – 09:45 AM PT – Protect Your Game Servers from DDoS Attacks (200) – Learn how to use the new AWS Shield Advanced for EC2 to protect your internet-facing game servers against network layer DDoS attacks and application layer attacks of all kinds.

Serverless

April 24, 2018 | 01:00 PM – 01:45 PM PT – Tips and Tricks for Building and Deploying Serverless Apps In Minutes (200) – Learn how to build and deploy apps in minutes.

Storage

May 1, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – Building Data Lakes That Cost Less and Deliver Results Faster (300) – Learn how Amazon S3 Select And Amazon Glacier Select increase application performance by up to 400% and reduce total cost of ownership by extending your data lake into cost-effective archive storage.

May 3, 2018 | 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM PT – Integrating On-Premises Vendors with AWS for Backup (300) – Learn how to work with AWS and technology partners to build backup & restore solutions for your on-premises, hybrid, and cloud native environments.

Catching Up on Some Recent AWS Launches and Publications

2017-09-20 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/catching-up-on-some-recent-aws-launches-and-publications/

As I have noted in the past, the AWS Blog Team is working hard to make sure that you know about as many AWS launches and publications as possible, without totally burying you in content! As part of our balancing act, we will occasionally publish catch-up posts to clear our queues and to bring more information to your attention. Here’s what I have in store for you today:

Monitoring for Cross-Region Replication of S3 Objects
Tags for Spot Fleet Instances
PCI DSS Compliance for 12 More Services
HIPAA Eligibility for WorkDocs
VPC Resizing
AppStream 2.0 Graphics Design Instances
AMS Connector App for ServiceNow
Regtech in the Cloud
New & Revised Quick Starts

Let’s jump right in!

Monitoring for Cross-Region Replication of S3 Objects
I told you about cross-region replication for S3 a couple of years ago. As I showed you at the time, you simply enable versioning for the source bucket and then choose a destination region and bucket. You can check the replication status manually, or you can create an inventory (daily or weekly) of the source and destination buckets.

The Cross-Region Replication Monitor (CRR Monitor for short) solution checks the replication status of objects across regions and gives you metrics and failure notifications in near real-time.

To learn more, read the CRR Monitor Implementation Guide and then use the AWS CloudFormation template to Deploy the CRR Monitor.

Tags for Spot Instances
Spot Instances and Spot Fleets (collections of Spot Instances) give you access to spare compute capacity. We recently gave you the ability to enter tags (key/value pairs) as part of your spot requests and to have those tags applied to the EC2 instances launched to fulfill the request:

To learn more, read Tag Your Spot Fleet EC2 Instances.

PCI DSS Compliance for 12 More Services
As first announced on the AWS Security Blog, we recently added 12 more services to our PCI DSS compliance program, raising the total number of in-scope services to 42. To learn more, check out our Compliance Resources.

HIPAA Eligibility for WorkDocs
In other compliance news, we announced that Amazon WorkDocs has achieved HIPAA eligibility and PCI DSS compliance in all AWS Regions where WorkDocs is available.

VPC Resizing
This feature allows you to extend an existing Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) by adding additional blocks of addresses. This gives you more flexibility and should help you to deal with growth. You can add up to four secondary /16 CIDRs per VPC. You can also edit the secondary CIDRs by deleting them and adding new ones. Simply select the VPC and choose Edit CIDRs from the menu:

Then add or remove CIDR blocks as desired:

To learn more, read about VPCs and Subnets.

AppStream 2.0 Graphics Design Instances
Powered by AMD FirePro S7150x2 Server GPUs and equipped with AMD Multiuser GPU technology, the new Graphics Design instances for Amazon AppStream 2.0 will let you run and stream graphics applications more cost-effectively than ever. The instances are available in four sizes, with 2-16 vCPUs and 7.5 GB to 61 GB of memory.

To learn more, read Introducing Amazon AppStream 2.0 Graphics Design, a New Lower Costs Instance Type for Streaming Graphics Applications.

AMS Connector App for ServiceNow
AWS Managed Services (AMS) provides Infrastructure Operations Management for the Enterprise. Designed to accelerate cloud adoption, it automates common operations such as change requests, patch management, security and backup.

The new AMS integration App for ServiceNow lets you interact with AMS from within ServiceNow, with no need for any custom development or API integration.

To learn more, read Cloud Management Made Easier: AWS Managed Services Now Integrates with ServiceNow.

Regtech in the Cloud
Regtech (as I learned while writing this), is short for regulatory technology, and is all about using innovative technology such as cloud computing, analytics, and machine learning to address regulatory challenges.

Working together with APN Consulting Partner Cognizant, TABB Group recently published a thought leadership paper that explains why regulations and compliance pose huge challenges for our customers in the financial services, and shows how AWS can help!

New & Revised Quick Starts
Our Quick Starts team has been cranking out new solutions and making significant updates to the existing ones. Here’s a roster:

Alfresco Content Services (v2)	Atlassian Confluence	Confluent Platform	Data Lake
Datastax Enterprise	GitHub Enterprise	Hashicorp Nomad	HIPAA
Hybrid Data Lake with Wandisco Fusion	IBM MQ	IBM Spectrum Scale	Informatica EIC
Magento (v2)	Linux Bastion (v2)	Modern Data Warehouse with Tableau	MongoDB (v2)
NetApp ONTAP	NGINX (v2)	RD Gateway	Red Hat Openshift
SAS Grid	SIOS Datakeeper	StorReduce	SQL Server (v2)

And that’s all I have for today!

— Jeff;

How to Enable Your Users to Access Office 365 with AWS Microsoft Active Directory Credentials

2017-09-14 Darryn Hendricks

Post Syndicated from Darryn Hendricks original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-enable-your-users-to-access-office-365-with-aws-microsoft-active-directory-credentials/

You can now enable your users to access Microsoft Office 365 with credentials that you manage in AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Microsoft AD. You can accomplish this by deploying Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) Connect and Active Directory Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 (AD FS 2016) with AWS Microsoft AD. AWS Microsoft AD makes it possible and easy for you to build a Windows environment in the AWS Cloud, synchronize your AWS Microsoft AD users into Microsoft Azure AD, and use Office 365, all without needing to create and manage AD domain controllers. Now you can also benefit from the broad set of AWS Cloud services for compute, storage, database, and Internet of Things (IoT) while continuing to use Office 365 business productivity apps—all with a single AD domain.

Office 365 provides different options to support user authentication with identities that come from AD. One common way to do this is to use Azure AD Connect and AD FS together with your AD directory. In this model, you use Azure AD Connect to synchronize user names from AD into Azure AD so that Office 365 can use those identities. To complete this solution, you use AD FS to enable Office 365 to authenticate the identities against your AD directory. Good news: AWS Microsoft AD now supports this model!

In this blog post, we show how to use Azure AD Connect and AD FS with AWS Microsoft AD so that your employees can access Office 365 by using their AD credentials.

Prerequisites

The instructions in this post assume that you understand how to create Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instances, know how to use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to log in to the instances, and already have completed the following tasks:

Create an AWS Microsoft AD directory.
Join an Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instance to your AWS Microsoft AD domain to use as a management instance (Management).
Install Active Directory Administration Tools on your Management instance.
Join an Amazon EC2 for Windows Server 2016 instance to the AWS Microsoft AD domain to use as your ADFS server. We show you how to install AD FS later.
Join an Amazon EC2 for Windows Server instance to the AWS Microsoft AD domain you use as your ADSync server. We will show you how to install Azure AD Connect on this instance later.
Using Active Directory Users and Computers on your Management instance, create a standard user named ADFSSVC in your AWS Microsoft AD directory. AD FS uses this user account later.
Create an active Office 365 subscription.
Add and verify your domain in Office 365

Note: You must use RDP and sign in with the AWS Microsoft AD admin account using the password you specified when you created your AWS Microsoft AD directory when performing Steps 3 and 6 in this “Prerequisites” section.

The following diagram illustrates the environment you must have in place to implement the solution in this blog post (the numbers in the diagram correspond to Steps 1–8 earlier in this section). We build on this configuration to install and configure Azure AD Connect and AD FS with Azure AD and Office 365.

Note: In this blog post, we use separate Microsoft Windows Server instances on which to run AD FS and Azure AD Connect. You can choose to combine these on a single server, as long as you use Windows Server 2016. Though it is technically possible to use an on-premises server as the AD FS and Azure AD host, such a configuration is counter to the idea of a Windows environment completely in the cloud. Also, this requires configuration of firewall ports and AWS security groups, which is beyond the scope of this blog.

Configuration background

When you create an AWS Microsoft AD directory, AWS exclusively retains the enterprise administrator account of the forest and domain administrator account for the root domain to deliver the directory as a managed service. When you set up your directory, AWS creates an organizational unit (OU) in the directory and delegates administrative privileges for the OU to your admin account. Within this OU, you administer users, groups, computers, Group Policy objects, other devices, and additional OUs as needed. You perform these actions using standard AD administration tools from a computer that is joined to an AWS Microsoft AD domain. Typically, the administration computer is an EC2 instance that you access using RDP, by logging in with your admin account credentials. From your admin account, you can also delegate permissions to other users or groups you create within your OU.

To use Office 365 with AD identities, you use Azure AD Connect to synchronize the AD identities into Azure AD. There are two commonly supported ways to use Azure AD Connect to support Office 365 use. In one model, you synchronize user names only, and you use AD FS to federate authentication from Office 365 to your AD. In the second model, you synchronize user names and passwords from your AD directory to Azure AD, and you do not have to use AD FS. The model supported by AWS Microsoft AD is the first model: synchronize user names only and use AD FS to authenticate from Office 365 to your AWS Microsoft AD. The AD FS model also enables authentication with SaaS applications that support federated authentication (this topic is beyond the scope of this blog post).

Note: Azure AD Connect now has a pass-through model of authentication. Because this was in a preview status at the time of writing this blog post, this authentication model is beyond the scope of this blog post.

In a default AD FS installation, AD FS uses two containers that require special AD permissions that your AWS Microsoft AD administrative account does not have. To address this, you will create two nested containers in your OU for AD FS to use. When you install AD FS, you tell AD FS where to find the containers through a Windows PowerShell parameter.

As described previously, we will now show you how to use Azure AD Connect and AD FS with AWS Microsoft AD with Azure AD and Office 365 in five steps, as illustrated in the following diagram.

Add two containers to AWS Microsoft AD for use by AD FS.
Install AD FS.
Integrate AD FS with Azure AD.
Synchronize users from AWS Microsoft AD to Azure AD with Azure AD Connect.
Sign in to Office 365 by using your Microsoft AD identities.

Step 1: Add two containers to AWS Microsoft AD for use by AD FS

The following steps show how to create the AD containers required by AD FS in your AWS Microsoft AD directory.

From the Management instance:

Generate a random global unique identifier (GUID) using the following Windows PowerShell command.
```
(New-Guid).Guid
```

Make a note of the GUID output because it will be required later on. In this case, the GUID is 67734c62-0805-4274-b72b-f7171110cd56.

Create a container named ADFS in your OU. The OU is located in the domain root and it has the same name as the NetBIOS name you specified when you created your AWS Microsoft AD directory. In this example, our OU name is AWS, and our domain is DC=awsexample,DC=com. You create the container by running the following Windows PowerShell command. You must replace the names that are in bold text with the names from your AWS Microsoft AD directory.
```
New-ADObject -Name "ADFS" -Type Container -Path “OU=YourNetBIOSName,DC=YourDomainSuffix,DC=YourDomainRoot”
```
Create another AD container in your new ADFS container, and use the previously generated GUID as the name. Do this by running the following Windows PowerShell command. Be sure to replace the names in bold text with the names from your AWS Microsoft AD directory and your GUID. In this example, we replace GUID with 67734c62-0805-4274-b72b-f7171110cd56. The other bold items shown match the names in our example AWS Microsoft AD directory.
```
New-ADObject -Name "GUID" -Type Container -Path “CN=ADFS,OU=YourNetBIOSName,DC=YourDomainSuffix,DC=YourDomainRoot”
```

To verify that you successfully created the ADFS and GUID containers, open Active Directory Users and Computers and navigate to the containers you created. Your root domain, OU name, and GUID name should match your AWS Microsoft AD configuration.

Note: If you do not see the ADFS and GUID containers, turn on Advanced Features by choosing View in the Active Directory Users and Computers tool, and then choosing Advanced Features.

Step 2: Install AD FS

In this section, we show how to install AD FS by using Windows PowerShell commands. First, though, select a federation service name for your AD FS server. You can create your federation service name by adding a short name (for example, sts) followed by your domain name (for example, awsexample.com). In this example, we use sts.awsexample.com as the federation service name.

Using your AWS Microsoft AD admin account, open an RDP session to your ADFS instance, run Windows PowerShell as a local administrator, and complete the following steps:

Install the Windows feature, AD FS, by running the following Windows PowerShell command. This command only adds the components needed to install your ADFS server later.
```
Install-WindowsFeature ADFS-Federation
```
Now that you have installed AD FS, you must obtain a certificate for use when you configure your ADFS server. The AD FS certificate plays an important role to secure communication between the ADFS server and clients, and to ensure tokens issued by the ADFS server are secured. AWS recommends that you use a certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA).

In our example, we use the SSL certificate, sts.awsexample.com. It is important to note that the common name and subject alternative name (SAN) must include the federation service name we plan to use for the AD FS server. In our example, the name is sts.awsexample.com.

Install the certificate on the AD FS server using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for certificates by following these steps:

Open a command prompt window.
Type mmc and press Enter.
Choose File, choose Add/Remove snap-in, and choose Add.
For Add Standalone Snap-in, choose Certificates and then choose Add.
For the Certificates snap-in, choose Computer account and then choose Next.
Choose Finish, and then choose OK to load the Certificates snap In.
Expand Certificates (Local Computer).
Right-click Personal, choose All Tasks, and then choose Import.
On the Certificate Import Wizard, choose Next.
Choose Browse to locate and select your certificate that has been given by your CA. Choose Next.
Ensure Certificate store is set to Personal, and choose Next.
Choose Finish and OK to complete the installation of the certificate on the AD FS server.

Next you need to retrieve the Thumbprint value of the newly installed certificate and save it for use when you configure your ADFS server. Follow the remaining steps:

In the Certificates console window, expand Personal, and choose Certificates.
Right-click the certificate, and then choose Open.
Choose the Details tab to locate the Thumbprint

Note: In this case, we will copy our certificate Thumbprint, d096652327cfa18487723ff61040c85c7f57f701, and save it in Windows Notepad.

Open an RDP session to your ADFS server by using the admin account for your AWS Microsoft AD directory. Install AD FS by running the following Windows PowerShell command. You must replace the bold strings in the command with the GUID you created in Step 1 and the names from your AWS Microsoft AD directory.
```
$adminConfig = @{"DKMContainerDn"="CN=GUID,CN=ADFS,OU=YourNetBIOSName,DC=YourDomainSuffix,DC=YourDomainRoot"}
```

Enter the AD FS standard user account credentials for the ADFSSVC user and save it in the script variable, $svcCred, by running the following Windows PowerShell command.
```
$svcCred = (get-credential)
```

Type the Microsoft AD administrator credentials of the Admin user and save it in the script variable, $localAdminCred, by running the following Windows PowerShell command.
```
$localAdminCred = (get-credential)
```

Install the AD FS server by running the following Windows PowerShell command. You must replace the bold items with the Thumbprint ID from your certificate, and replace the federation service name with the federation service name you chose earlier. For our example, the federation service name is awsexample.com and we copy our certificate Thumbprint, d096652327cfa18487723ff61040c85c7f57f701, from where we saved it in Windows Notepad.

Note: Be sure to remove any empty spaces in the certificate Thumbprint value.

Install-ADFSFarm -CertificateThumbprint <Thumbprint ID> -FederationServiceName "YourFederationServiceName" -ServiceAccountCredential $svcCred -Credential $localAdminCred -OverwriteConfiguration -AdminConfiguration $adminConfig -SigningCertificateThumbprint <Thumbprint ID> -DecryptionCertificateThumbprint <Thumbprint ID>

Create a DNS A record for use with AD FS. This record resolves the federation service name to the public IP address you assign to your ADFS instance. You must create the DNS A record at the DNS hosting provider that hosts your domain. In the following example, sts.awsexample.com is the federation service name and 54.x.x.x is the public IP address of our AD FS instance.
- Hostname: awsexample.com
- Record Type: A
- IP Address: x.x.x

Enable the AD FS sign-in page by running the following Windows PowerShell command.
```
Set-ADFSProperties -EnableIdpInitiatedSignonPage $true
```

To verify that the AD FS sign-in page works, open a browser on the AD FS instance, and sign in on the AD FS sign-in page (https://<my federation service name>/AD FS/ls/IdpInitiatedSignOn.aspx) by using your AWS Microsoft AD admin account. In our example, the federation service name (<my federation service name> in the sign-in page URL) is sts.awsexample.com.

Step 3: Integrate AD FS with Azure AD

The following steps show you how to connect AD FS with Office 365 by connecting to Azure AD with Windows PowerShell and federating the custom domain.From the ADFS instance, make sure you run Windows PowerShell as a local administrator and complete the following steps:

Connect to Azure AD using Windows PowerShell.
Federate the custom domain you added and verified in Azure AD by running the following two Windows PowerShell commands. You must update the items in bold text with the names from your AWS Microsoft AD directory. For our example, our AD FS instance’s Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is adfsserver.awsexample.com, and our domain name is awsexample.com.
```
Set-MsolADFSContext –computer <ADFS instance FQDN>

Convert-MsolDomainToFederated –domain <Domain name>
```

Step 4: Synchronize users from AWS Microsoft AD to Azure AD with Azure AD Connect

The following steps show you how to install and customize Azure AD Connect to synchronize your AWS Microsoft AD identities to Azure AD for use with Office 365.Open an RDP session to your ADSync instance by using your AWS Microsoft AD admin user account:

Download Azure AD Connect.
On the Welcome page of the Azure AD Connect Wizard, accept the license terms and privacy notice, and then choose Continue.
On the Express Settings page, choose Customize.
On the Install required components page, choose Install.
On the User sign-in page, choose Do not configure and then choose Next.
On the Connect to Azure AD page, enter your Office 365 global administrator account credentials and then choose Next.
On the Connect your directories page, choose Active Directory as the Directory Type, and then choose your Microsoft AD Forest as your Forest. Choose Add Directory.
At the prompt, enter your AWS Microsoft AD admin account credentials, and then choose OK.
Now that you have added the AWS Microsoft AD directory, choose Next.
On the Azure AD sign-in configuration page, choose Next.

Note: AWS recommends the userPrincipalName (UPN) attribute for use by AWS Microsoft AD users when they sign in to Azure AD and Office 365. The UPN attribute format combines the user’s login name and the UPN-suffix of an AWS Microsoft AD user. The UPN suffix is the domain name of your AWS Microsoft AD domain and the same domain name you added and verified with Azure AD.

In the following example from the Active Directory Users and Computers tool, the user’s UPN is [email protected], which is a combination of the user’s login name, awsuser, with the UPN-suffix, @awsexample.com.

On the Domain and OU filtering page, choose Sync selected domains and OUs, choose the Users OU under your NetBIOS OU, and then choose Next.
On the Uniquely identifying your users page, choose Next.
On the Filter users and devices page, choose Next.
On the Optional features page, choose Next.
On the Ready to configure page, choose Start the synchronization process when configuration completes, and then choose Install.
The Azure AD Connect installation has now completed. Choose Exit.

Note: By default, the Azure AD Connect sync scheduler runs every 30 minutes to synchronize your AWS Microsoft AD identities to Azure AD. You can tune the scheduler by opening a Windows PowerShell session as an administrator and running the appropriate Windows PowerShell commands. For more information, go to Azure AD Connect Sync Scheduler.

Tip: Do you need to synchronize a change immediately? You can manually start a sync cycle outside the scheduled sync cycle from the Azure AD Connect sync instance. Open a Windows PowerShell session as an administrator and run the following Windows PowerShell commands.

Import-Module ADSync
Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType Delta

Step 5: Sign in to Office 365 by using your AWS Microsoft AD identities

The following steps show you how to sign in to Office 365 using AD FS as the authentication method with your AWS Microsoft AD user account. In this example, we assign a license to the AWS Microsoft AD user account, [email protected], in the Office 365 admin center. We then sign in to Office 365 by using the AWS Microsoft AD user account UPN, [email protected].

Using a computer on the internet, open a browser and complete the following steps:

Access the Office 365 admin center using your global administrator account, and assign a license to a user you created in your AWS Microsoft AD directory.
Sign in with the AWS Microsoft AD user account at https://portal.office.com.

When entering the UPN of the AWS Microsoft AD user account, you will be redirected to your ADFS server sign-in page to complete user authentication.
On the AD FS sign-in page, enter your UPN and the password of the AWS Microsoft AD user account.
You have successfully signed in to Office 365 using your AWS Microsoft AD user account!

Summary

In this blog post, we showed how to use Azure AD Connect and AD FS with AWS Microsoft AD so that your employees can access Office 365 using their AD credentials. Now that you have Azure AD Connect and AD FS in place, you also might want to explore how to build upon this infrastructure to add sign-in for other Software as a Service (SaaS) applications that are compatible with AD FS. For example, this blog post explains how you can provide your users single sign-on access to Amazon AppStream by using AD FS.

If you have comments or questions, post them on the Directory Service forum or contact AWS Support.

– Darryn and Ron

Delivering Graphics Apps with Amazon AppStream 2.0

2017-09-12 Deepak Suryanarayanan

Post Syndicated from Deepak Suryanarayanan original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/delivering-graphics-apps-with-amazon-appstream-2-0/

Sahil Bahri, Sr. Product Manager, Amazon AppStream 2.0

Do you need to provide a workstation class experience for users who run graphics apps? With Amazon AppStream 2.0, you can stream graphics apps from AWS to a web browser running on any supported device. AppStream 2.0 offers a choice of GPU instance types. The range includes the newly launched Graphics Design instance, which allows you to offer a fast, fluid user experience at a fraction of the cost of using a graphics workstation, without upfront investments or long-term commitments.

In this post, I discuss the Graphics Design instance type in detail, and how you can use it to deliver a graphics application such as Siemens NX―a popular CAD/CAM application that we have been testing on AppStream 2.0 with engineers from Siemens PLM.

Graphics Instance Types on AppStream 2.0

First, a quick recap on the GPU instance types available with AppStream 2.0. In July, 2017, we launched graphics support for AppStream 2.0 with two new instance types that Jeff Barr discussed on the AWS Blog:

Graphics Desktop
Graphics Pro

Many customers in industries such as engineering, media, entertainment, and oil and gas are using these instances to deliver high-performance graphics applications to their users. These instance types are based on dedicated NVIDIA GPUs and can run the most demanding graphics applications, including those that rely on CUDA graphics API libraries.

Last week, we added a new lower-cost instance type: Graphics Design. This instance type is a great fit for engineers, 3D modelers, and designers who use graphics applications that rely on the hardware acceleration of DirectX, OpenGL, or OpenCL APIs, such as Siemens NX, Autodesk AutoCAD, or Adobe Photoshop. The Graphics Design instance is based on AMD’s FirePro S7150x2 Server GPUs and equipped with AMD Multiuser GPU technology. The instance type uses virtualized GPUs to achieve lower costs, and is available in four instance sizes to scale and match the requirements of your applications.

Instance	vCPUs	Instance RAM (GiB)	GPU Memory (GiB)
stream.graphics-design.large	2	7.5 GiB	1
stream.graphics-design.xlarge	4	15.3 GiB	2
stream.graphics-design.2xlarge	8	30.5 GiB	4
stream.graphics-design.4xlarge	16	61 GiB	8

The following table compares all three graphics instance types on AppStream 2.0, along with example applications you could use with each.

	Graphics Design	Graphics Desktop	Graphics Pro
Number of instance sizes	4	1	3
GPU memory range	1–8 GiB	4 GiB	8–32 GiB
vCPU range	2–16	8	16–32
Memory range	7.5–61 GiB	15 GiB	122–488 GiB
Graphics libraries supported	AMD FirePro S7150x2	NVIDIA GRID K520	NVIDIA Tesla M60
Price range (N. Virginia AWS Region)	$0.25 – $2.00/hour	$0.5/hour	$2.05 – $8.20/hour
Example applications	Adobe Premiere Pro, AutoDesk Revit, Siemens NX	AVEVA E3D, SOLIDWORKS	AutoDesk Maya, Landmark DecisionSpace, Schlumberger Petrel

Example graphics instance set up with Siemens NX

In the section, I walk through setting up Siemens NX with Graphics Design instances on AppStream 2.0. After set up is complete, users can able to access NX from within their browser and also access their design files from a file share. You can also use these steps to set up and test your own graphics applications on AppStream 2.0. Here’s the workflow:

Create a file share to load and save design files.
Create an AppStream 2.0 image with Siemens NX installed.
Create an AppStream 2.0 fleet and stack.
Invite users to access Siemens NX through a browser.
Validate the setup.

To learn more about AppStream 2.0 concepts and set up, see the previous post Scaling Your Desktop Application Streams with Amazon AppStream 2.0. For a deeper review of all the setup and maintenance steps, see Amazon AppStream 2.0 Developer Guide.

Step 1: Create a file share to load and save design files

To launch and configure the file server

Open the EC2 console and choose Launch Instance.
Scroll to the Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Base Image and choose Select.
Choose an instance type and size for your file server (I chose the general purpose m4.large instance). Choose Next: Configure Instance Details.
Select a VPC and subnet. You launch AppStream 2.0 resources in the same VPC. Choose Next: Add Storage.
If necessary, adjust the size of your EBS volume. Choose Review and Launch, Launch.
On the Instances page, give your file server a name, such as My File Server.
Ensure that the security group associated with the file server instance allows for incoming traffic from the security group that you select for your AppStream 2.0 fleets or image builders. You can use the default security group and select the same group while creating the image builder and fleet in later steps.

Log in to the file server using a remote access client such as Microsoft Remote Desktop. For more information about connecting to an EC2 Windows instance, see Connect to Your Windows Instance.

To enable file sharing

Create a new folder (such as C:\My Graphics Files) and upload the shared files to make available to your users.
From the Windows control panel, enable network discovery.
Choose Server Manager, File and Storage Services, Volumes.
Scroll to Shares and choose Start the Add Roles and Features Wizard. Go through the wizard to install the File Server and Share role.
From the left navigation menu, choose Shares.
Choose Start the New Share Wizard to set up your folder as a file share.
Open the context (right-click) menu on the share and choose Properties, Permissions, Customize Permissions.
Choose Permissions, Add. Add Read and Execute permissions for everyone on the network.

Step 2: Create an AppStream 2.0 image with Siemens NX installed

To connect to the image builder and install applications

Open the AppStream 2.0 management console and choose Images, Image Builder, Launch Image Builder.
Create a graphics design image builder in the same VPC as your file server.
From the Image builder tab, select your image builder and choose Connect. This opens a new browser tab and display a desktop to log in to.
Log in to your image builder as ImageBuilderAdmin.
Launch the Image Assistant.
Download and install Siemens NX and other applications on the image builder. I added Blender and Firefox, but you could replace these with your own applications.
To verify the user experience, you can test the application performance on the instance.

Before you finish creating the image, you must mount the file share by enabling a few Microsoft Windows services.

To mount the file share

Open services.msc and check the following services:

DNS Client
Function Discovery Resource Publication
SSDP Discovery
UPnP Device H

If any of the preceding services have Startup Type set to Manual, open the context (right-click) menu on the service and choose Start. Otherwise, open the context (right-click) menu on the service and choose Properties. For Startup Type, choose Manual, Apply. To start the service, choose Start.
From the Windows control panel, enable network discovery.
Create a batch script that mounts a file share from the storage server set up earlier. The file share is mounted automatically when a user connects to the AppStream 2.0 environment.

Logon Script Location: C:\Users\Public\logon.bat

Script Contents:

:loop

net use H: \\path\to\network\share

PING localhost -n 30 >NUL

IF NOT EXIST H:\ GOTO loop

Open gpedit.msc and choose User Configuration, Windows Settings, Scripts. Set logon.bat as the user logon script.
Next, create a batch script that makes the mounted drive visible to the user.

Logon Script Location: C:\Users\Public\startup.bat

Script Contents:
REG DELETE “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer” /v “NoDrives” /f

Open Task Scheduler and choose Create Task.
Choose General, provide a task name, and then choose Change User or Group.
For Enter the object name to select, enter SYSTEM and choose Check Names, OK.
Choose Triggers, New. For Begin the task, choose At startup. Under Advanced Settings, change Delay task for to 5 minutes. Choose OK.
Choose Actions, New. Under Settings, for Program/script, enter C:\Users\Public\startup.bat. Choose OK.
Choose Conditions. Under Power, clear the Start the task only if the computer is on AC power Choose OK.
To view your scheduled task, choose Task Scheduler Library. Close Task Scheduler when you are done.

Step 3: Create an AppStream 2.0 fleet and stack

To create a fleet and stack

In the AppStream 2.0 management console, choose Fleets, Create Fleet.
Give the fleet a name, such as Graphics-Demo-Fleet, that uses the newly created image and the same VPC as your file server.
Choose Stacks, Create Stack. Give the stack a name, such as Graphics-Demo-Stack.
After the stack is created, select it and choose Actions, Associate Fleet. Associate the stack with the fleet you created in step 1.

Step 4: Invite users to access Siemens NX through a browser

To invite users

Choose User Pools, Create User to create users.
Enter a name and email address for each user.
Select the users just created, and choose Actions, Assign Stack to provide access to the stack created in step 2. You can also provide access using SAML 2.0 and connect to your Active Directory if necessary. For more information, see the Enabling Identity Federation with AD FS 3.0 and Amazon AppStream 2.0 post.

Your user receives an email invitation to set up an account and use a web portal to access the applications that you have included in your stack.

Step 5: Validate the setup

Time for a test drive with Siemens NX on AppStream 2.0!

Open the link for the AppStream 2.0 web portal shared through the email invitation. The web portal opens in your default browser. You must sign in with the temporary password and set a new password. After that, you get taken to your app catalog.
Launch Siemens NX and interact with it using the demo files available in the shared storage folder – My Graphics Files.

After I launched NX, I captured the screenshot below. The Siemens PLM team also recorded a video with NX running on AppStream 2.0.

Summary

In this post, I discussed the GPU instances available for delivering rich graphics applications to users in a web browser. While I demonstrated a simple setup, you can scale this out to launch a production environment with users signing in using Active Directory credentials, accessing persistent storage with Amazon S3, and using other commonly requested features reviewed in the Amazon AppStream 2.0 Launch Recap – Domain Join, Simple Network Setup, and Lots More post.

To learn more about AppStream 2.0 and capabilities added this year, see Amazon AppStream 2.0 Resources.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 Launch Recap – Domain Join, Simple Network Setup, and Lots More

2017-08-23 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-appstream-2-0-launch-recap-domain-join-simple-network-setup-and-lots-more/

We (the AWS Blog Team) work to maintain a delicate balance between coverage and volume! On the one hand, we want to make sure that you are aware of as many features as possible. On the other, we don’t want to bury you in blog posts. As a happy medium between these two extremes we sometimes let interesting new features pile up for a couple of weeks and then pull them together in the form of a recap post such as this one.

Today I would like to tell you about the latest and greatest additions to Amazon AppStream 2.0, our application streaming service (read Amazon AppStream 2.0 – Stream Desktop Apps from AWS to learn more). We launched GPU-powered streaming instances just a month ago and have been adding features rapidly; here are some recent launches that did not get covered in individual posts at launch time:

Microsoft Active Directory Domains – Connect AppStream 2.0 streaming instances to your Microsoft Active Directory domain.
User Management & Web Portal – Create and manage users from within the AppStream 2.0 management console.
Persistent Storage for User Files – Use persistent, S3-backed storage for user home folders.
Simple Network Setup – Enable Internet access for image builder and instance fleets more easily.
Custom VPC Security Groups – Use VPC security groups to control network traffic.
Audio-In – Use microphones with your streaming applications.

These features were prioritized based on early feedback from AWS customers who are using or are considering the use of AppStream 2.0 in their enterprises. Let’s take a quick look at each one.

Domain Join
This much-requested feature allows you to connect your AppStream 2.0 streaming instances to your Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain. After you do this you can apply existing policies to your streaming instances, and provide your users with single sign-on access to intranet resources such as web sites, printers, and file shares. Your users are authenticated using the SAML 2.0 provider of your choice, and can access applications that require a connection to your AD domain.

To get started, visit the AppStream 2.0 Console, create and store a Directory Configuration:

Newly created image builders and newly launched fleets can then use the stored Directory Configuration to join the AD domain in an Organizational Unit (OU) that you provide:

To learn more, read Using Active Directory Domains with AppStream 2.0 and follow the Setting Up the Active Directory tutorial. You can also learn more in the What’s New.

User Management & Web Portal
This feature makes it easier for you to give new users access to the applications that you are streaming with AppStream 2.0 if you are not using the Domain Join feature that I described earlier.

You can create and manage users, give them access to applications through a web portal, and send them welcome emails, all with a couple of clicks:

AppStream 2.0 sends each new user a welcome email that directs them to a web portal where they will be prompted to create a permanent password. Once they are logged in they are able to access the applications that have been assigned to them.

To learn more, read Using the AppStream 2.0 User Pool and the What’s New.

Persistent Storage
This feature allows users of streaming applications to store files for use in later AppStream 2.0 sessions. Each user is given a home folder which is stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) between sessions. The folder is made available to the streaming instance at the start of the session and changed files are periodically synced back to S3. To enable this feature, simply check Enable Home Folders when you create your next fleet:

All folders (and the files within) are stored in an S3 bucket that is automatically created within your account when the feature is enabled. There is no limit on total file storage but we recommend that individual files be limited to 5 gigabytes.

Regular S3 pricing applies; to learn more about this feature read about Persistent Storage with AppStream 2.0 Home Folders and check out the What’s New.

Simple Network Setup
Setting up Internet access for your image builder and your streaming instances was once a multi-step process. You had to create a Network Address Translation (NAT) gateway in a public subnet of one of your VPCs and configure traffic routing rules.

Now, you can do this by marking the image builder or the fleet for Internet access, selecting a VPC that has at least one public subnet, and choosing the public subnet(s), all from the AppStream 2.0 Console:

To learn more, read Network Settings for Fleet and Image Builder Instances and Enabling Internet Access Using a Public Subnet and check out the What’s New.

Custom VPC Security Groups
You can create VPC security groups and associate them with your image builders and your fleets. This gives you fine-grained control over inbound and outbound traffic to databases, license servers, file shares, and application servers. Read the What’s New to learn more.

Audio-In
You can use analog and USB microphones, mixing consoles, and other audio input devices with your streaming applications. Simply click on Enable Microphone in the AppStream 2.0 toolbar to get started. Read the What’s New to learn more.

Available Now
All of these features are available now and you can start using them today in all AWS Regions where Amazon AppStream 2.0 is available.

— Jeff;

PS – If you are new to AppStream 2.0, try out some pre-installed applications. No setup needed and you’ll get to experience the power of streaming applications first-hand.

Enabling Identity Federation with AD FS 3.0 and Amazon AppStream 2.0

2017-08-18 Matt Guanti

Post Syndicated from Matt Guanti original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/enabling-identity-federation-with-ad-fs-3-0-and-amazon-appstream-2-0/

Want to provide users with single sign-on access to AppStream 2.0 using existing enterprise credentials? Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 3.0 can be used to provide single sign-on for Amazon AppStream 2.0 using SAML 2.0.

You can use your existing Active Directory or any SAML 2.0–compliant identity service to set up single sign-on access of AppStream 2.0 applications for your users. Identity federation using SAML 2.0 is currently available in all AppStream 2.0 regions.

This post explains how to configure federated identities for AppStream 2.0 using AD FS 3.0.

Walkthrough

After setting up SAML 2.0 federation for AppStream 2.0, users can browse to a specially crafted (AD FS RelayState) URL and be taken directly to their AppStream 2.0 applications.

When users sign in with this URL, they are authenticated against Active Directory. After they are authenticated, the browser receives a SAML assertion as an authentication response from AD FS, which is then posted by the browser to the AWS sign-in SAML endpoint. Temporary security credentials are issued after the assertion and the embedded attributes are validated. The temporary credentials are then used to create the sign-in URL. The user is redirected to the AppStream 2.0 streaming session. The following diagram shows the process.

The user browses to https://applications.exampleco.com. The sign-on page requests authentication for the user.
The federation service requests authentication from the organization’s identity store.
The identity store authenticates the user and returns the authentication response to the federation service.
On successful authentication, the federation service posts the SAML assertion to the user’s browser.
The user’s browser posts the SAML assertion to the AWS Sign-In SAML endpoint (https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml). AWS Sign-In receives the SAML request, processes the request, authenticates the user, and forwards the authentication token to the AppStream 2.0 service.
Using the authentication token from AWS, AppStream 2.0 authorizes the user and presents applications to the browser.

In this post, use domain.local as the name of the Active Directory domain. Here are the steps in this walkthrough:

Configure AppStream 2.0 identity federation.
Configure the relying trust.
Create claim rules.
Enable RelayState and forms authentication.
Create the AppStream 2.0 RelayState URL and access the stack.
Test the configuration.

Prerequisites

This walkthrough assumes that you have the following prerequisites:

An existing Active Directory forest
An instance joined to a domain with the “Active Directory Federation Services” role installed and post-deployment configuration completed
Familiarity with AppStream 2.0 resources

Configure AppStream 2.0 identity federation

First, create an AppStream 2.0 stack, as you reference the stack in upcoming steps. Name the stack ExampleStack. For this walkthrough, it doesn’t matter which underlying fleet you associate with the stack. You can create a fleet using one of the example Amazon-AppStream2-Sample-Image images available, or associate an existing fleet to the stack.

Get the AD FS metadata file

The first thing you need is the metadata file from your AD FS server. The metadata file is a signed document that is used later in this guide to establish the relying party trust. Don’t edit or reformat this file.

To download and save this file, navigate to the following location, replacing <FQDN_ADFS_SERVER> with your AD FS s fully qualified server name.

https://<FQDN_ADFS_SERVER>/FederationMetadata/2007-06/FederationMetadata.xml

Save the file to a local location that you can access from the AWS Management Console later.

Create the SAML provider

Next, create the SAML provider in IAM, using the console. You could also create it using the AWS CLI.

In the IAM console, choose Identity providers, Create provider.

On the Configure Provider page, for Provider Type, choose SAML. For Provider Name, type ADFS01 or similar name. Choose Choose File to upload the metadata document previously downloaded. Choose Next Step.

Verify the provider information and choose Create.

You need the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the identity provider (IdP) to configure claims rules later in this walkthrough. To get this, select the IdP that you just created. On the summary page, copy the value for Provider ARN. The ARN is in the following format:

arn:aws:iam::<AccountID>:saml-provider/<Provider Name>

Configure an IAM Policy

Next, configure a policy with permissions to the AppStream 2.0 stack. This is the level of permissions that federated users have within AWS.

In the IAM console, choose Policies, Create Policy, Create Your Own Policy.

For Policy Name, enter a descriptive name. For Description, enter the level of permissions. For Policy Document, you customize the Region-Code, AccountID (without hyphens), and case-sensitive Stack-Name values.

The following screenshot shows how to create a policy that gives users permissions to only a single AppStream 2.0 stack, named ExampleStack. For more information, see the Step 2: Configure Permissions in AWS for Your Federated Users topic.

For Region Codes, use one of the following values based on the region you are using AppStream 2.0 (the available regions for AppStream 2.0):

us-east-1
us-west-2
eu-west-1
ap-northeast-1

Choose Create Policy and you should see the following notification:

Create an IAM role

Here, you create a role that relates to an Active Directory group assigned to your AppStream 2.0 federated users. For this configuration, Active Directory groups and AWS roles are case-sensitive. Here you create an IAM Role named “ExampleStack” and an Active Directory group named in the format AWS-AccountNumber-RoleName, for example AWS-012345678910-ExampleStack.

In the IAM console, choose Roles, Create new role.

On the Select Role type page, choose Role for identity provider access. Choose Select next to Grant Web Single Sign-On (WebSSO) access to SAML providers.

On the Establish Trust page, make sure that the SAML provider that you just created (such as ADFS01) is selected. For Attribute and Value, keep the default values.

On the Verify Role Trust page, the Federated value matches the ARN noted previously for the principal IdP created earlier. The SAML: aud value equals https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml, as shown below. This is prepopulated and does not require any change. Choose Next Step.

On the Attach policy page, attach the policy that you created earlier granting federated users access only to the AppStream 2.0 stack. In this walkthrough, the policy was named AppStream2_ExampleStack.

After selecting the correct policy, choose Next Step.

On the Set role name and review page, name the role ExampleStack. You can customize this naming convention, as I explain later when I create the claims rules.

You can describe the role as desired. Ensure that the trusted entities match the AD FS IdP ARN, and that the policy attached is the policy created earlier granting access only to this stack.

Choose Create Role.

Important: If you grant more than the stack permissions to federated users, you can give them access to other areas of the console as well. AWS strongly recommends that you attach policies to a role that grants access only to the resources to be shared with federated users.

For example, if you attach the AdministratorAccess policy instead of AppStream2_ExampleStack, any AppStream 2.0 federated user in the ExampleStack Active Directory group has AdministratorAccess in your AWS account. Even though AD FS routes users to the stack, users can still navigate to other areas of the console, using deep links that go directly to specific console locations.

Next, create the Active Directory group in the format AWS-AccountNumber-RoleName using the “ExampleStack” role name that you just created. You reference this Active Directory group in the AD FS claim rules later using regex. For Group scope, choose Global. For Group type, choose Security

Note: To follow this walkthrough exactly, name your Active Directory group in the format “AWS-AccountNumber-ExampleStack” replacing AccountNumber with your AWS AccountID (without hyphens). For example:

AWS-012345678910-ExampleStack

Configure the relying party trust

In this section, you configure AD FS 3.0 to communicate with the configurations made in AWS.

Open the AD FS console on your AD FS 3.0 server.

Open the context (right-click) menu for AD FS and choose Add Relying Party Trust…

On the Welcome page, choose Start. On the Select Data Source page, keep Import data about the relying party published online or on a local network checked. For Federation metadata address (host name or URL), type the following link to the SAML metadata to describe AWS as a relying party and then choose Next.

https://signin.aws.amazon.com/static/saml-metadata.xml

On the Specify Display Name page, for Display name, type “AppStream 2.0 – ExampleStack” or similar value. For Notes, provide a description. Choose Next.

On the Configure Multi-factor Authentication Now? page, choose I do not want to configure multi-factor authentication settings for this relying party trust at this time. Choose Next.

Because you are controlling access to the stack using an Active Directory group, and IAM role with an attached policy, on the Choose Issuance Authorization Rules page, check Permit all users to access this relying party. Choose Next.

On the Ready to Add Trust page, there shouldn’t be any changes needed to be made. Choose Next.

On the Finish page, clear Open the edit Claim Rules dialog for this relying party trust when the wizard closes. You open this later.

Next, you add the https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml URL is listed on the Identifiers tab within the properties of the trust. To do this, open the context (right-click) menu for the relying party trust that you just created and choose Properties.

On the Monitoring tab and clear Monitor relying party. Choose Apply. On the Identifiers tab, for Relying party identifier, add https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml and choose OK.

Create claim rules

In this section, you create four AD FS claim rules, which identify accounts, set LDAP attributes, get the Active Directory groups, and match them to the role created earlier.

In the AD FS console, expand Trust Relationships, choose Relying Party Trusts, and then select the relying party trust that you just created (in this case, the display name is AppStream 2.0 – ExampleStack). Open the context (right-click) menu for the relying party trust and choose Edit Claim Rules. Choose Add Rule.

Rule 1: Name ID

This claim rule tells AD FS the type of expected incoming claim and how to send the claim to AWS. AD FS receives the UPN and tags it as the Name ID when it’s forwarded to AWS. This rule interacts with the third rule, which fetches the user groups.

Claim rule template: Transform an Incoming Claim

Configure Claim Rule values:

Claim Rule Name: Name ID

Incoming Claim Type: UPN

Outgoing Claim Type: Name ID

Outgoing name ID format: Persistent Identifier

Pass through all claim values: selected

Rule 2: RoleSessionName

This rule sets a unique identifier for the user. In this case, use the E-Mail-Addresses values.

Claim rule template: Send LDAP Attributes as Claims

Configure Claim Rule values:

Claim rule name: RoleSessionName

Attribute store: Active Directory

LDAP Attribute: E-Mail-Addresses

Outgoing Claim Type: https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/RoleSessionName

Rule 3: Get Active Directory groups

This rule queries Active Directory and returns the groups to which the user is assigned, such as AWS-012345678910-ExampleStack .

Claim rule template: Send Claims Using a Custom Rule

Configure Claim Rule values:

Claim Rule Name: Get Active Directory Groups

Custom Rule:

c:[Type == "http://schemas.microsoft.com/ws/2008/06/identity/claims/windowsaccountname", Issuer == "AD AUTHORITY"] => add(store = "Active Directory", types = ("http://temp/variable"), query = ";tokenGroups;{0}", param = c.Value);

Rule 4: Roles

This rule converts the value of the Active Directory group starting with AWS-AccountNumber prefix to the roles known by AWS. For this rule, you need the AWS IdP ARN that you noted earlier. If your IdP in AWS was named ADFS01 and the AccountID was 012345678910, the ARN would look like the following:

arn:aws:iam::012345678910:saml-provider/ADFS01

Claim rule template: Send Claims Using a Custom Rule

Configure Claim Rule values:

Claim Rule Name: Roles

Custom Rule:

c:[Type == "http://temp/variable", Value =~ "(?i)^AWS-"]

 => issue(Type = "https://aws.amazon.com/SAML/Attributes/Role", Value = RegExReplace(c.Value, "AWS-012345678910-", "arn:aws:iam::012345678910:saml-provider/ADFS01,arn:aws:iam::019517892450:role/"));

Change arn:aws:iam::012345678910:saml-provider/ADFS01 to the ARN of your AWS IdP
Change 012345678910 to the ID (without hyphens) of the AWS account.

In this walkthrough, “AWS-” returns the Active Directory groups that start with the AWS- prefix, then removes AWS-012345678910- leaving ExampleStack left on the Active Directory Group name to match the ExampleStack IAM role. To customize the role naming convention, for example to name the IAM Role ADFS-ExampleStack, add “ADFS-” to the end of the role ARN at the end of the rule: arn:aws:iam::012345678910:role/ADFS-.

You should now have four claims rules created:

NameID
RoleSessionName
Get Active Directory Groups
Role

Enable RelayState and forms authentication

By default, AD FS 3.0 doesn’t have RelayState enabled. AppStream 2.0 uses RelayState to direct users to your AppStream 2.0 stack.

On your AD FS server, open the following with elevated (administrator) permissions:

%systemroot%\adfs\Microsoft.IdentityServer.Servicehost.exe.config

In the Microsoft.IdentityServer.Servicehost.exe.config file, find the section <microsoft.identityServer.web>. Within this section, add the following line:

<useRelayStateForIdpInitiatedSignOn enabled="true" />

The edit should look like the following:

In the AD FS console, verify that forms authentication is enabled. Choose Authentication Policies. Under Primary Authentication, for Global Settings, choose Edit.

For Extranet, choose Forms Authentication. For Intranet, do the same and choose OK.

On the AD FS server, from an elevated (administrator) command prompt, run the following commands sequentially to stop, then start the AD FS service to register the changes:

net stop adfssrv 
net start adfssrv

Create the AppStream 2.0 RelayState URL and access the stack

Now that RelayState is enabled, you can generate the URL.

I have created an Excel spreadsheet for RelayState URL generation, available as RelayGenerator.xlsx. This spreadsheet only requires the fully qualified domain name for your AD FS server, account ID (without hyphens), stack name (case-sensitive), and the AppStream 2.0 region. After all the inputs are entered, the spreadsheet generates a URL in the blue box, as shown in the screenshot below. Copy the entire contents of the blue box to retrieve the generated RelayState URL for AD FS.

Alternatively, if you do not have Excel, there are third-party tools for RelayState URL generation. However, they do require some customization to work with AppStream 2.0. Example customization steps for one such tool are provided below.

CodePlex has an AD FS RelayState generator, which downloads an HTML file locally that you can use to create the RelayState URL. The generator says it’s for AD FS 2.0; however, it also works for AD FS 3.0. You can generate the RelayState URL manually but if the syntax or case sensitivity is incorrect even slightly, it won’t work. I recommend using the tool to ensure a valid URL.

When you open the URL generator, clear out the default text fields. You see a tool that looks like the following:

To generate the values, you need three pieces of information:

IDP URL String
Relying Party Identifier
Relay State / Target App

IDP URL String

The IDP URL string is the URL you use to hit your AD FS sign-on page. For example:

https://<ADFSInstance>/adfs/ls/idpinitiatedsignon.aspx

In this configuration, use the following:

https://adfs01.domain.local/adfs/ls/idpinitiatedsignon.aspx

Relying Party Identifier

This value is always the following:

https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml

Relay State / Target App

This is the RelayState link to your AppStream 2.0 stack. The format for this URL is as follows:

https://appstream2.<region>.aws.amazon.com/saml?stack=Case_Sensitive_Stack_Name&accountID=account_id_without_hyphens

Ultimately, the URL looks like the following example, which is for us-east-1, with a stack name of ExampleStack, and an account ID of 012345678910. The stack name is case-sensitive.

https://appstream2.us-east-1.aws.amazon.com/saml?stack=ExampleStack&accountId=012345678910

For more information, see Step 5: Configure the Relay State of Your Federation.

Input these values into the URL generator, and generate a RelayState URL.

Generated URL (case sensitive):’

https://adfs01.domain.local/adfs/ls/idpinitiatedsignon.aspx?RelayState=RPID%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fsignin.aws.amazon.com%252Fsaml%26RelayState%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fappstream2.us-east-1.aws.amazon.com%252Fsaml%253Fstack%253D%2520ExampleStack%2526accountId%253D012345678910

The generated RelayState URL can now be saved and used by users to log in directly from anywhere that can reach the AD FS server, using their existing domain credentials. After they are authenticated, users are directed seamlessly to the AppStream 2.0 stack.

Test the configuration

Create a new AD user in Domain.local named Test User, with a username TUser and an email address. An email address is required based on the claim rules.

Next, add TUser to the AD group you created for the AWS-012345678910-ExampleStack stack.

Next, navigate to the RelayState URL and log in with domain\TUser.

After you log in, you are directed to the streaming session for the ExampleStack stack. As an administrator, you can disassociate and associate different fleets of applications to this stack, without impacting federation, and deliver different applications to this group of federated users.

Because the policy attached to the role only allows access to this AppStream 2.0 stack, if a federated user were to try to access another section of the console, such as Amazon EC2, they would discover that they are not authorized to see (describe) any resources or perform any actions, as shown in the screenshot below. This is why it’s important to grant access only to the AppStream 2.0 stack.

Configurations for AD FS 4.0

If you are using AD FS 4.0, there are a few differences from the procedures discussed earlier.

Do not customize the following file as described in the Enable RelayState and forms authentication of the AD FS 3.0 guide:

%systemroot%\adfs\Microsoft.IdentityServer.Servicehost.exe.config

Enable the IdP-initiated sign-on page that is used when generating the RelayState URL. To do this, open an elevated PowerShell terminal and run the following command:

Set-AdfsProperties -EnableIdPInitiatedSignonPage $true

This enables the following URL referenced earlier:

https://<ADFSInstance>/adfs/ls/idpinitiatedsignon.aspx

Next, enable Relay States. To do this, run the following command from an elevated PowerShell terminal:

Set-AdfsProperties -EnableRelayStateForIdpInitiatedSignOn $true

To register these changes with AD FS, restart the AD FS service from an elevated PowerShell terminal (or command prompt):

net stop adfssrv
net start adfssrv

After these changes are made, AD FS 4.0 should now work for AppStream 2.0 identity federation.

Troubleshooting

If you are still encountering errors with your setup, below are common error messages you may see, and configuration areas that I recommend that you check.

Invalid policy

Unable to authorize the session. (Error Code: INVALID_AUTH_POLICY);Status Code:401

This error message can occur when the IAM policy does not permit access to the AppStream 2.0 stack. However, it can also occur when the stack name is not entered into the policy or RelayState URL using case-sensitive characters. For example, if your stack name is “ExampleStack” in AppStream 2.0 and the policy has “examplestack” or if the Relay State URL has “examplestack” or any capitalization pattern other than the exact stack name, you see this error message.

Invalid relay state

Error: Bad Request.(Error Code: INVALID_RELAY_STATE);Status Code:400

If you are receiving this error message, there is likely to be another issue in the Relay State URL. It could be related to case sensitivity (other than the stack name). For example, https://relay-state-region-endoint?stack=stackname&accountId=aws-account-id-without-hyphens.

This URL must contain the region-specific Relay State endpoint exactly as listed in the Step 5: Configure the Relay State of Your Federation topic.

Cross account access

Unable to authorize the session. Cross account access is not allowed. (Error Code: CROSS_ACCOUNT_ACCESS_NOT_ALLOWED);Status Code:401

If you see this error message, check to make sure that the AccountId number is correct in the Relay State URL.

Summary

In this post, you walked through enabling AD FS 3.0 for AppStream 2.0 identity federation. You should now be able to configure AD FS 3.0 or 4.0 for AppStream 2.0 identity federation. If you have questions or suggestions, please comment below.

New – GPU-Powered Streaming Instances for Amazon AppStream 2.0

2017-07-26 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-gpu-powered-streaming-instances-for-amazon-appstream-2-0/

We launched Amazon AppStream 2.0 at re:Invent 2016. This application streaming service allows you to deliver Windows applications to a desktop browser.

AppStream 2.0 is fully managed and provides consistent, scalable performance by running applications on general purpose, compute optimized, and memory optimized streaming instances, with delivery via NICE DCV – a secure, high-fidelity streaming protocol. Our enterprise and public sector customers have started using AppStream 2.0 in place of legacy application streaming environments that are installed on-premises. They use AppStream 2.0 to deliver both commercial and line of business applications to a desktop browser. Our ISV customers are using AppStream 2.0 to move their applications to the cloud as-is, with no changes to their code. These customers focus on demos, workshops, and commercial SaaS subscriptions.

We are getting great feedback on AppStream 2.0 and have been adding new features very quickly (even by AWS standards). So far this year we have added an image builder, federated access via SAML 2.0, CloudWatch monitoring, Fleet Auto Scaling, Simple Network Setup, persistent storage for user files (backed by Amazon S3), support for VPC security groups, and built-in user management including web portals for users.

New GPU-Powered Streaming Instances
Many of our customers have told us that they want to use AppStream 2.0 to deliver specialized design, engineering, HPC, and media applications to their users. These applications are generally graphically intensive and are designed to run on expensive, high-end PCs in conjunction with a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Due to the hardware requirements of these applications, cost considerations have traditionally kept them out of situations where part-time or occasional access would otherwise make sense. Recently, another requirement has come to the forefront. These applications almost always need shared, read-write access to large amounts of sensitive data that is best stored, processed, and secured in the cloud. In order to meet the needs of these users and applications, we are launching two new types of streaming instances today:

Graphics Desktop – Based on the G2 instance type, Graphics Desktop instances are designed for desktop applications that use the CUDA, DirectX, or OpenGL for rendering. These instances are equipped with 15 GiB of memory and 8 vCPUs. You can select this instance family when you build an AppStream image or configure an AppStream fleet:

Graphics Pro – Based on the brand-new G3 instance type, Graphics Pro instances are designed for high-end, high-performance applications that can use the NVIDIA APIs and/or need access to large amounts of memory. These instances are available in three sizes, with 122 to 488 GiB of memory and 16 to 64 vCPUs. Again, you can select this instance family when you configure an AppStream fleet:

To learn more about how to launch, run, and scale a streaming application environment, read Scaling Your Desktop Application Streams with Amazon AppStream 2.0.

As I noted earlier, you can use either of these two instance types to build an AppStream image. This will allow you to test and fine tune your applications and to see the instances in action.

Streaming Instances in Action
We’ve been working with several customers during a private beta program for the new instance types. Here are a few stories (and some cool screen shots) to show you some of the applications that they are streaming via AppStream 2.0:

AVEVA is a world leading provider of engineering design and information management software solutions for the marine, power, plant, offshore and oil & gas industries. As part of their work on massive capital projects, their customers need to bring many groups of specialist engineers together to collaborate on the creation of digital assets. In order to support this requirement, AVEVA is building SaaS solutions that combine the streamed delivery of engineering applications with access to a scalable project data environment that is shared between engineers across the globe. The new instances will allow AVEVA to deliver their engineering design software in SaaS form while maximizing quality and performance. Here’s a screen shot of their Everything 3D app being streamed from AppStream:

Nissan, a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer, trains its automotive specialists using 3D simulation software running on expensive graphics workstations. The training software, developed by The DiSti Corporation, allows its specialists to simulate maintenance processes by interacting with realistic 3D models of the vehicles they work on. AppStream 2.0’s new graphics capability now allows Nissan to deliver these training tools in real time, with up to date content, to a desktop browser running on low-cost commodity PCs. Their specialists can now interact with highly realistic renderings of a vehicle that allows them to train for and plan maintenance operations with higher efficiency.

Cornell University is an American private Ivy League and land-grant doctoral university located in Ithaca, New York. They deliver advanced 3D tools such as AutoDesk AutoCAD and Inventor to students and faculty to support their course work, teaching, and research. Until now, these tools could only be used on GPU-powered workstations in a lab or classroom. AppStream 2.0 allows them to deliver the applications to a web browser running on any desktop, where they run as if they were on a local workstation. Their users are no longer limited by available workstations in labs and classrooms, and can bring their own devices and have access to their course software. This increased flexibility also means that faculty members no longer need to take lab availability into account when they build course schedules. Here’s a copy of Autodesk Inventor Professional running on AppStream at Cornell:

Now Available
Both of the graphics streaming instance families are available in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), EU (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Regions and you can start streaming from them today. Your applications must run in a Windows 2012 R2 environment, and can make use of DirectX, OpenGL, CUDA, OpenCL, and Vulkan.

With prices in the US East (Northern Virginia) Region starting at $0.50 per hour for Graphics Desktop instances and $2.05 per hour for Graphics Pro instances, you can now run your simulation, visualization, and HPC workloads in the AWS Cloud on an economical, pay-by-the-hour basis. You can also take advantage of fast, low-latency access to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), AWS Lambda, Amazon Redshift, and other AWS services to build processing workflows that handle pre- and post-processing of your data.

— Jeff;

Scaling Your Desktop Application Streams with Amazon AppStream 2.0

2017-04-04 Bryan Liston

Post Syndicated from Bryan Liston original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/scaling-your-desktop-application-streams-with-amazon-appstream-2-0/

Want to stream desktop applications to a web browser, without rewriting them? Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, secure, application streaming service. An easy way to learn what the service does is to try out the end-user experience, at no cost.

In this post, I describe how you can scale your AppStream 2.0 environment, and achieve some cost optimizations. I also add some setup and monitoring tips.

AppStream 2.0 workflow

You import your applications into AppStream 2.0 using an image builder. The image builder allows you to connect to a desktop experience from within the AWS Management Console, and then install and test your apps. Then, create an image that is a snapshot of the image builder.

After you have an image containing your applications, select an instance type and launch a fleet of streaming instances. Each instance in the fleet is used by only one user, and you match the instance type used in the fleet to match the needed application performance. Finally, attach the fleet to a stack to set up user access. The following diagram shows the role of each resource in the workflow.

Figure 1: Describing an AppStream 2.0 workflow

Setting up AppStream 2.0

To get started, set up an example AppStream 2.0 stack or use the Quick Links on the console. For this example, I named my stack ds-sample, selected a sample image, and chose the stream.standard.medium instance type. You can explore the resources that you set up in the AWS console, or use the describe-stacks and describe-fleets commands as follows:

Figure 2: Describing an AppStream 2.0 stack

Figure 3: Describing an AppStream 2.0 fleet

To set up user access to your streaming environment, you can use your existing SAML 2.0 compliant directory. Your users can then use their existing credentials to log in. Alternatively, to quickly test a streaming connection, or to start a streaming session from your own website, you can create a streaming URL. In the console, choose Stacks, Actions, Create URL, or call create-streaming-url as follows:

Figure 4: Creating a streaming URL

You can paste the streaming URL into a browser, and open any of the displayed applications.

Now that you have a sample environment set up, here are a few tips on scaling.

Scaling and cost optimization for AppStream 2.0

To provide an instant-on streaming connection, the instances in an AppStream 2.0 fleet are always running. You are charged for running instances, and each running instance can serve exactly one user at any time. To optimize your costs, match the number of running instances to the number of users who want to stream apps concurrently. This section walks through three options for doing this:

Fleet Auto Scaling
Fixed fleets based on a schedule
Fleet Auto Scaling with schedules

Fleet Auto Scaling

To dynamically update the number of running instances, you can use Fleet Auto Scaling. This feature allows you to scale the size of the fleet automatically between a minimum and maximum value based on demand. This is useful if you have user demand that changes constantly, and you want to scale your fleet automatically to match this demand. For examples about setting up and managing scaling policies, see Fleet Auto Scaling.

You can trigger changes to the fleet through the available Amazon CloudWatch metrics:

CapacityUtilization – the percentage of running instances already used.
AvailableCapacity – the number of instances that are unused and can receive connections from users.
InsufficientCapacityError – an error that is triggered when there is no available running instance to match a user’s request.

You can create and attach scaling policies using the AWS SDK or AWS Management Console. I find it convenient to set up the policies using the console. Use the following steps:

In the AWS Management Console, open AppStream 2.0.
Choose Fleets, select a fleet, and choose Scaling Policies.
For Minimum capacity and Maximum capacity, enter values for the fleet.

Figure 5: Fleets tab for setting scaling policies

Create scale out and scale in policies by choosing Add Policy in each section.

Figure 6: Adding a scale out policy

Figure 7: Adding a scale in policy

After you create the policies, they are displayed as part of your fleet details.

The scaling policies are triggered by CloudWatch alarms. These alarms are automatically created on your behalf when you create the scaling policies using the console. You can view and modify the alarms via the CloudWatch console.

Figure 8: CloudWatch alarms for triggering fleet scaling

Fixed fleets based on a schedule

An alternative option to optimize costs and respond to predictable demand is to fix the number of running instances based on the time of day or day of the week. This is useful if you have a fixed number of users signing in at different times of the day― scenarios such as a training classes, call center shifts, or school computer labs. You can easily set the number of instances that are running using the AppStream 2.0 update-fleet command. Update the Desired value for the compute capacity of your fleet. The number of Running instances changes to match the Desired value that you set, as follows:

Figure 9: Updating desired capacity for your fleet

Set up a Lambda function to update your fleet size automatically. Follow the example below to set up your own functions. If you haven’t used Lambda before, see Step 2: Create a HelloWorld Lambda Function and Explore the Console.

To create a function to change the fleet size

In the Lambda console, choose Create a Lambda function.
Choose the Blank Function blueprint. This gives you an empty blueprint to which you can add your code.
Skip the trigger section for now. Later on, you can add a trigger based on time, or any other input.
In the Configure function section:
1. Provide a name and description.
2. For Runtime, choose Node.js 4.3.
3. Under Lambda function handler and role, choose Create a custom role.
4. In the IAM wizard, enter a role name, for example Lambda-AppStream-Admin. Leave the defaults as is.
5. After the IAM role is created, attach an AppStream 2.0 managed policy “AmazonAppStreamFullAccess” to the role. For more information, see Working with Managed Policies. This allows Lambda to call the AppStream 2.0 API on your behalf. You can edit and attach your own IAM policy, to limit access to only actions you would like to permit. To learn more, see Controlling Access to Amazon AppStream 2.0.
6. Leave the default values for the rest of the fields, and choose Next, Create function.

To change the AppStream 2.0 fleet size, choose Code and add some sample code, as follows:

'use strict';

/**
This AppStream2 Update-Fleet blueprint sets up a schedule for a streaming fleet
**/

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const appstream = new AWS.AppStream();
const fleetParams = {
  Name: 'ds-sample-fleet', /* required */
  ComputeCapacity: {
    DesiredInstances: 1 /* required */

  }
};

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
    console.log('Received event:', JSON.stringify(event, null, 2));

    var resource = event.resources[0];
    var increase = resource.includes('weekday-9am-increase-capacity')

    try {
        if (increase) {
            fleetParams.ComputeCapacity.DesiredInstances = 3
        } else {
            fleetParams.ComputeCapacity.DesiredInstances = 1
        }
        appstream.updateFleet(fleetParams, (error, data) => {
            if (error) {
                console.log(error, error.stack);
                return callback(error);
            }
            console.log(data);
            return callback(null, data);
        });
    } catch (error) {
        console.log('Caught Error: ', error);
        callback(error);
    }
};

Test the code. Choose Test and use the “Hello World” test template. The first time you do this, choose Save and Test. Create a test input like the following to trigger the scaling update.
You see output text showing the result of the update-fleet call. You can also use the CLI to check the effect of executing the Lambda function.

Next, to set up a time-based schedule, set a trigger for invoking the Lambda function.

To set a trigger for the Lambda function

Choose Triggers, Add trigger.
Choose CloudWatch Events – Schedule.
Enter a rule name, such as “weekday-9am-increase-capacity”, and a description. For Schedule expression, choose cron. You can edit the value for the cron later.
After the trigger is created, open the event weekday-9am-increase-capacity.
In the CloudWatch console, edit the event details. To scale out the fleet at 9 am on a weekday, you can adjust the time to be: 00 17 ? * MON-FRI *. (If you’re not in Seattle (Pacific Time Zone), change this to another specific time zone).
You can also add another event that triggers at the end of a weekday.

This setup now triggers scale-out and scale-in automatically, based on the time schedule that you set.

Fleet Auto Scaling with schedules

You can choose to combine both the fleet scaling and time-based schedule approaches to manage more complex scenarios. This is useful to manage the number of running instances based on business and non-business hours, and still respond to changes in demand. You could programmatically change the minimum and maximum sizes for your fleet based on time of day or day of week, and apply the default scale-out or scale-in policies. This allows you to respond to predictable minimum demand based on a schedule.

For example, at the start of a work day, you might expect a certain number of users to request streaming connections at one time. You wouldn’t want to wait for the fleet to scale out and meet this requirement. However, during the course of the day, you might expect the demand to scale in or out, and would want to match the fleet size to this demand.

To achieve this, set up the scaling polices via the console, and create a Lambda function to trigger changes to the minimum, maximum, and desired capacity for your fleet based on a schedule. Replace the code for the Lambda function that you created earlier with the following code:

'use strict';

/**
This AppStream2 Update-Fleet function sets up a schedule for a streaming fleet
**/

const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const appstream = new AWS.AppStream();
const applicationAutoScaling = new AWS.ApplicationAutoScaling();

const fleetParams = {
  Name: 'ds-sample-fleet', /* required */
  ComputeCapacity: {
    DesiredInstances: 1 /* required */
  }
};

var scalingParams = {
  ResourceId: 'fleet/ds-sample-fleet', /* required - fleet name*/
  ScalableDimension: 'appstream:fleet:DesiredCapacity', /* required */
  ServiceNamespace: 'appstream', /* required */
  MaxCapacity: 1,
  MinCapacity: 6,
  RoleARN: 'arn:aws:iam::659382443255:role/service-role/ApplicationAutoScalingForAmazonAppStreamAccess'
};

exports.handler = (event, context, callback) => {
    
    console.log('Received this event now:', JSON.stringify(event, null, 2));
    
    var resource = event.resources[0];
    var increase = resource.includes('weekday-9am-increase-capacity')

    try {
        if (increase) {
            //usage during business hours - start at capacity of 10 and scale
            //if required. This implies at least 10 users can connect instantly. 
            //More users can connect as the scaling policy triggers addition of
            //more instances. Maximum cap is 20 instances - fleet will not scale
            //beyond 20. This is the cap for number of users.
            fleetParams.ComputeCapacity.DesiredInstances = 10
            scalingParams.MinCapacity = 10
            scalingParams.MaxCapacity = 20
        } else {
            //usage during non-business hours - start at capacity of 1 and scale
            //if required. This implies only 1 user can connect instantly. 
            //More users can connect as the scaling policy triggers addition of
            //more instances. 
            fleetParams.ComputeCapacity.DesiredInstances = 1
            scalingParams.MinCapacity = 1
            scalingParams.MaxCapacity = 10
        }
        
        //Update minimum and maximum capacity used by the scaling policies
        applicationAutoScaling.registerScalableTarget(scalingParams, (error, data) => {
             if (error) console.log(error, error.stack); 
             else console.log(data);                     
            });
            
        //Update the desired capacity for the fleet. This sets 
        //the number of running instances to desired number of instances
        appstream.updateFleet(fleetParams, (error, data) => {
            if (error) {
                console.log(error, error.stack);
                return callback(error);
            }

            console.log(data);
            return callback(null, data);
        });
            
    } catch (error) {
        console.log('Caught Error: ', error);
        callback(error);
    }
};

Note: To successfully execute this code, you need to add IAM policies to the role used by the Lambda function. The policies allow Lambda to call the Application Auto Scaling service on your behalf.

Figure 10: Inline policies for using Application Auto Scaling with Lambda

{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
   {
      "Effect": "Allow", 
         "Action": [
            "iam:PassRole"
         ],
         "Resource": "*"
   }
]
}
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
   {
      "Effect": "Allow", 
         "Action": [
            "application-autoscaling:*"
         ],
         "Resource": "*"
   }
]
}

Monitoring usage

After you have set up scaling for your fleet, you can use CloudWatch metrics with AppStream 2.0, and create a dashboard for monitoring. This helps optimize your scaling policies over time based on the amount of usage that you see.

For example, if you were very conservative with your initial set up and over-provisioned resources, you might see long periods of low fleet utilization. On the other hand, if you set the fleet size too low, you would see high utilization or errors from insufficient capacity, which would block users’ connections. You can view CloudWatch metrics for up to 15 months, and drive adjustments to your fleet scaling policy.

Figure 11: Dashboard with custom Amazon CloudWatch metrics

Summary

These are just a few ideas for scaling AppStream 2.0 and optimizing your costs. Let us know if these are useful, and if you would like to see similar posts. If you have comments about the service, please post your feedback on the AWS forum for AppStream 2.0.

New Amazon AppStream 2.0 Features – Fleet Auto Scaling, Image Builder, SAML, Metrics, and Fleet Management

2017-03-23 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-appstream-2-0-features-fleet-auto-scaling-image-builder-saml-metrics-and-fleet-management/

My colleague Gene Farrell introduced you to Amazon AppStream 2.0 late last year. In his guest post, Gene explained how AppStream 2.0 lets you run desktop applications securely on any device, from within the comfort of an HTML5 web browser (read the entire post to learn more). For example, I used the AppStream 2.0 Try it Now page to launch and then immediately start using Siemens Solid Edge. I simply chose the desired application from the Try it Now page:

I was running Solid Edge a few seconds later, no installation or setup needed:

By Popular Request – New Features for Enterprises, SMBs, and ISVs
Since that re:Invent launch, we have been fine-tuning AppStream 2.0, adding in some features that our customers have been asking for. These features will allow our customers to more easily deploy, access, manage and track the applications that they make available for use through AppStream. We’ve rolled most of these out without individual blog posts, and today I’d like to let you know what we’ve been up to. Here are the newest features:

Fleet Auto Scaling – This brand-new feature allows you to use the CloudWatch metrics to scale your fleet up and down in response to changes in demand. This allows you to deliver applications as economically as possible, while still providing instant access.

Image Builder – You can build your own AppStream 2.0 images that contain your choice of applications.

SAML 2.0 Authentication – You can use your existing SAML 2.0 compliant directory with AppStream 2.0. Your users can use their existing credentials to log in.

Fleet Management – You have additional management options for the instances that run your applications.

CloudWatch Metrics – You can observe and monitor seven Amazon CloudWatch metrics, including the size and overall utilization of your fleets.

Let’s take a look at each one!

Fleet Auto Scaling
This feature is brand new, and is powered by the new CloudWatch metrics! You can now associate scaling policies with each of your fleets and use them to meet varying levels of user demand and to control costs. If you are using AppStream 2.0 to deliver productivity applications to your users, you can use the scaling policies to ensure that capacity comes online as needed during office hours, and goes away in the evening when your users are done for the day. Here is a fleet with scale out (add capacity) and scale in (remove capacity) policies:

In order to take advantage of this feature, you set the minimum and maximum capacity when you create the fleet:

This will create the default policies, which you can later edit, add, or remove (you can have up to 50 policies per fleet). To learn more, read about AppStream Fleet Auto Scaling.

Image Builder
This feature allows you to create custom images that contain your choice of commercial or proprietary applications. In order to do this, you launch an instance called an image builder. Then you log in to the instance, install and configure the applications as desired, and capture the state of the instance as an image. The entire login and customization process takes place within your web browser; you don’t have to download any keys or remember any passwords. The application appears in the Image Registry and is available to your users.

I can launch an image builder from the AppStream 2.0 Console:

Next, I choose the starting point (an existing image):

Then I configure the builder by giving it a name, choosing an instance size, and setting up the VPC:

I click on Review, confirm my settings, and then wait for the builder to launch:

Then I can connect to the image builder, set up the apps, and create an image. I have my choice of two identities when I connect, Admin and Test:

I select ImageBuildAdmin and (when prompted for a password), click on Log me in in the Admin Commands menu:

After logging in, I launch the Image Assistant app and use it to install and test my apps:

To learn more, read about Image Builders and follow the Using an AppStream 2.0 Image Builder Tutorial.

SAML 2.0 Authentication
This feature allows you to use any external identity provider that supports SAML 2.0 including Active Directory Federation Services, PingFederate Server, Okta, or Shibboleth:

After you follow the directions in Setting Up SAML, your users can log in to AppStream 2.0 using their existing identity and credentials. You can manage users and groups, control access to applications based on the identity or location of the user, and use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). To learn more, read Enabling Single Sign-on Access to AppStream 2.0 Using SAML 2.0. If you have already set up federated access to the AWS Management Console, much of what you already know will apply.

Fleet Management
This feature gives me additional control over my fleets (groups of instances that are running applications for users). I can see all of my fleets on a single screen:

I can select a fleet and then act on it:

Some properties of a fleet can be edited at any time. Others, including the VPC properties, can only be edited after the fleet has been stopped. To learn more, read about Stacks and Fleets.

CloudWatch Metrics
AppStream publishes eight metrics to CloudWatch for each fleet:

RunningCapacity – Number of instances running.
InUseCapacity – Number of instances in use.
DesiredCapacity – Number of instances that are either running or pending.
AvailableCapacity – Number of idle instances available for use.
PendingCapacity – Number of instances being provisioned.
CapacityUtilization – Percentage of fleet being used.
InsufficientCapacityError – Number of sessions rejected due to lack of capacity.

You can see these metrics from within the AppStream 2.0 Console:

These metrics will help you to measure overall usage to to fine tune the size of your fleet. As is the case with every CloudWatch metric, you can generate alerts and raise alarms when a metric is outside of the desired range. You could also use AWS Lambda functions to make changes to your environment or to generate specialized notifications. To learn more, read about Monitoring Amazon AppStream 2.0 Resources.

Available Now
All of these features are available now and you can start using them today!

— Jeff;

AWS Week in Review – March 6, 2017

2017-03-13 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-week-in-review-march-6-2017/

This edition includes all of our announcements, content from all of our blogs, and as much community-generated AWS content as I had time for!

Monday March 6	We announced the AWS Health Tools Repository. We announced that you can now Send High-Volume SMS Messages from Dedicated Short Codes. We announced that Amazon Elastic File System Now Supports NFSv4 Lock Upgrading and Downgrading. We announced that Amazon SES Now Supports up to 10,000 Verified Identities. We updated the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator – it is now price accurate and region complete. We published customer success stories from : BidMotion, Iconosquare, The Met Office, Mojo Networks, MoveWORK, Porter Airlines, and Springworks. The AWS Java Blog announced that AWS Toolkit for Eclipse Now Supports Creation of Maven Projects for AWS, Lambda, and Serverless Applications. I looked back at Amazon RDS in 2016. The AWS Enterprise Blog shared Some Cloud Best Practices from iTMethods. The AWS Partner Network Blog talked about CloudHealth Technologies – Enabling Next-Generation MSPs. The AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog launched the Fourth City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge. Cloudonaut continued their AWS Velocity series with an EC2-Based CI/CD Pipeline. DZone talked about The AWS Serverless API Portal. Trek10 showed you how to Schedule Calling Webhooks with Cron-Like Syntax in AWS Lambda.
Tuesday March 7	We announced that the AWS Database Migration Service has Processed 20,000 Migrations and Counting. We announced that Amazon Aurora Now Supports Cross-Account Encrypted Snapshot Sharing and Encryption Support for Globally Distributed Database Deployments. We announced that AWS Database Migration Service Now Supports Individual Table Reload. We announced a new AWS Direct Connection Location in Vienna. We announced that AWS Step Functions is Now Available in the EU (Frankfurt) Region. We announced that AWS IoT is Now Available in the EU (London) Region. We announced that AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory is Now Available in the Canada (Central) Region. The AWS Partner Network Blog announced that the Heptio Kubernetes on AWS Quick Start is Now Available. The Mechanical Turk Blog announced that Developers Can Now Use AWS SDKs to Access the MTurk API. A two-part series on the AWS Compute Blog showed you how to Automate the Creation of Consistent Amazon EBS Snapshots with Amazon EC2 Systems Manager (Part 1, Part 2). The AWS Java Blog reminded you that Client Constructors are Now Deprecated in the AWS SDK for Java. The AWS Security Blog showed you How to Protect Your Web Application Against DDoS Attacks by Using Amazon Route 53 and an External Content Delivery Network. The AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog shared An Introduction to AWS for Nonprofits & NGOs. Twilio showed you how to Get Server Outage Alerts via SMS with AWS Lambda. Cloud Academy discussed Two Long-Awaited New Features in Amazon EC2. Flux7 explained how Mass AWS Migration Grows Developer Efficiency & Productivity with Self-Serve IT. nTh Among All spent some time Exploring AWS Organizations.
Wednesday March 8	We announced that Amazon AppStream Now Allows You to use CloudWatch to Monitor Your Fleets. We announced an Edge Location in Prague, Czech Republic. We announced that AWS CodePipeline Now Supports AWS CodeBuild as a Test Action. We announced that AWS Directory Service for Microsoft AD Simplifies On-Premises User Sign-in to the AWS Management Console. We announced Amazon EMR 5.4.0 and Support for R4 Instances. The AWS AI Blog announced that the Deep Learning AMI v2.0 is Now Available for Amazon Linux. The AWS Database Blog talked about Using the Redis Geospatial Capbilities via Amazon ElastiCache. The AWS Enterprise Blog noted that Tenets Provide Essential Guidance on Your Cloud Journey. The AWS Big Data Blog announced Big Changes to the Big Data on AWS Training Course. The AWS Security Blog showed you How to Access the AWS Management Console Using AWS Microsoft AD and Your On-Premises Credentials. CloudHealth listed Four Steps to Understanding the TCO of Migrating a Workload to AWS. Gorillastack discussed the AWS Lambda IteratorAge Metric for Increased Processing Operations Visibility.
Thursday March 9	We announced that Amazon SES Can Now Automatically Warm Up Your Dedicated IP Addresses. We announced that Amazon Cognito is Now Available in the EU (London) Region. We announced that Amazon API Gateway Now Integrates with AWS Certificate Manager. We announced that EC2 Rescue is Now Available. We added Ten New Service Limit Checks, AuroraDB Availability, and EC2 Windows Checks to AWS Trusted Advisor. We published a View From the Floor of HIMSS as part of our focus on AWS and Healthcare. The AWS Compute Blog showed you how to Create a Simple “Fetch & Run” AWS Batch Job. The AWS AI Blog showed you how to Predict Customer Churn with Amazon Machine Learning. The AWS Big Data Blog showed you how to Analyze VPC Flow Logs with Amazon Kinesis Firehose, Amazon Athena, and Amazon QuickSight. The AWS Security Blog explained how the New Cloud Directory API Makes it Easier to Query Data Along Multiple Dimensions. Stelligent talked about Using Parameter Store with AWS CodePipeline. Botmetric announced the Botmetric Smart RI for AWS Reserved Instance Management. CloudCheckr announced Multiple New Reports for Multiple Account Views. Gathering Clouds explained How to Migrate to AWS in 30 Days.
Friday March 10	We announced that Amazon Aurora is Now Available in the US West (N. California) Region. We announced that Amazon Aurora Now Supports T2.Small Instances. CloudHealth shared The 3 “R’s” of Lowering AWS Costs. DZone shared CloudFormation Templates: ECS Cluster and Service, Legacy VPC Wrapper, and Automated Tests.
Saturday March 11	DZone published AWS Timeouts: A Detective Story.
Sunday March 12	DZone talked about Serverless Development With Node.js, AWS Lambda, and MongoDB Atlas.

— Jeff;

AWS Webinars – January 2017 (Bonus: December Recap)

2016-12-19 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-webinars-january-2017-bonus-december-recap/

Have you had time to digest all of the announcements that we made at AWS re:Invent? Are you ready to debug with AWS X-Ray, analyze with Amazon QuickSight, or build conversational interfaces using Amazon Lex? Do you want to learn more about AWS Lambda, set up CI/CD with AWS CodeBuild, or use Polly to give your applications a voice?

January Webinars
In our continued quest to provide you with training and education resources, I am pleased to share the webinars that we have set up for January. These are free, but they do fill up and you should definitely register ahead of time. All times are PT and each webinar runs for one hour:

January 16:

9:00 AM – Announcing AWS X-Ray: Analyze and Debug Your Applications.
10:30 AM – Announcing Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility.
Noon – Introducing Amazon QuickSight: Business Analytics for Everyone.

January 17:

January 18::

9:00 AM- Announcing Amazon Lightsail: Launch and Manage Simple Virtual Private Servers.
10:30 AM – Deep Dive on AWS Lambda.
Noon – Announcing AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate.

January 19:

9:00 AM – Deep Dive on Amazon EC2 Instances – Featuring New Instances.
10:30 AM – Announcing AWS Greengrass: Use AWS Lambda and AWS IoT on Your Device.

January 20

December Webinar Recap
The December webinar series is already complete; here’s a quick recap with links to the recordings:

December 12:

December 13:

December 14:

December 15:

Announcing Amazon EC2 F1 instances with Custom FPGAs.

— Jeff;

PS – If you want to get a jump start on your 2017 learning objectives, the re:Invent 2016 Presentations and re:Invent 2016 Videos are just a click or two away.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 – Stream Desktop Apps from AWS

2016-12-02 Jeff Barr

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-appstream-2-0-stream-desktop-apps-from-aws/

My colleague Gene Farrell wrote the guest post below to tell you how the original vision for Amazon AppStream evolved in the face of customer feedback.

— Jeff;

At AWS, helping our customers solve problems and serve their customers with technology is our mission. It drives our thinking, and it’s at the center of how we innovate. Our customers use services from AWS to build next-generation mobile apps, create delightful web experiences, and even run their core IT workloads, all at global scale.

While we have seen tremendous innovation and transformation in mobile, web, and core IT, relatively little has changed with desktops and desktop applications. End users don’t yet enjoy freedom in where and how they work; IT is stuck with rigid and expensive systems to manage desktops, applications, and a myriad of devices; and securing company information is harder than ever. In many ways, the cloud seems to have bypassed this aspect of IT.

Our customers want to change that. They want the same benefits of flexibility, scale, security, performance, and cost for desktops and applications as they’re seeing with mobile, web, and core IT. A little over two years ago, we introduced Amazon WorkSpaces, a fully managed, secure cloud desktop service that provides a persistent desktop running on AWS. Today, I am excited to introduce you to Amazon AppStream 2.0, a fully managed, secure application streaming service for delivering your desktop apps to web browsers.

Customers have told us that they have many traditional desktop applications that need to work on multiple platforms. Maintaining these applications is complicated and expensive, and customers are looking for a better solution. With AppStream 2.0, you can provide instant access to desktop applications using a web browser on any device, by streaming them from AWS. You don’t need to rewrite your applications for the cloud, and you only need to maintain a single version. Your applications and data remain secure on AWS, and the application stream is encrypted end to end.

Looking back at the original AppStream
Before I get into more details about AppStream 2.0, it’s worth looking at the history of the original Amazon AppStream service. We launched AppStream in 2013 as an SDK-based service that customers could use to build streaming experiences for their desktop apps, and move these apps to the cloud. We believed that the SDK approach would enable customers to integrate application streaming into their products. We thought game developers and graphics ISVs would embrace this development model, but it turns out it was more work than we anticipated, and required significant engineering investment to get started. Those who did try it, found that the feature set did not meet their needs. For example, AppStream only offered a single instance type based on the g2.2xlarge EC2 instance. This limited the service to high-end applications where performance would justify the cost. However, the economics didn’t make sense for a large number of applications.

With AppStream, we set out to solve a significant customer problem, but failed to get the solution right. This is a risk that we are willing to take at Amazon. We want to move quickly, explore areas where we can help customers, but be prepared for failure. When we fail, we learn and iterate fast. In this case, we continued to hear from customers that they needed a better solution for desktop applications, so we went back to the drawing board. The result is AppStream 2.0.

Benefits of AppStream 2.0
AppStream 2.0 addresses many of the concerns we heard from customers who tried the original AppStream service. Here are a few of the benefits:

Run desktop applications securely on any device in an HTML5 web browser on Windows and Linux PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks.
Instant-on access to desktop applications from wherever users are. There are no delays, no large files to download, and no time-consuming installations. Users get a responsive, fluid experience that is just like running natively installed apps.
Simple end user interface so users can run in full screen mode, open multiple applications within a browser tab, and easily switch and interact between them. You can upload files to a session, access and edit them, and download them when you’re done. You can also print, listen to audio, and adjust bandwidth to optimize for your network conditions.
Secure applications and data that remain on AWS – only encrypted pixels are streamed to end users. Application streams and user input flow through a secure streaming gateway on AWS over HTTPS, making them firewall friendly. Applications can run inside your own virtual private cloud (VPC), and you can use Amazon VPC security features to control access. AppStream 2.0 supports identity federation, which allows your users to access their applications using their corporate credentials.
Fully managed service, so you don’t need to plan, deploy, manage, or upgrade any application streaming infrastructure. AppStream 2.0 manages the AWS resources required to host and run your applications, scales automatically, and provides access to your end users on demand.
Consistent, scalable performance on AWS, with access to compute capabilities not typically available on local devices. You can instantly scale locally and globally, and ensure that your users always get a low-latency experience.
Multiple streaming instance types to run your applications. You can use instance types from the General Purpose, Compute Optimized, and Memory Optimized instance families to optimize application performance and reduce your overall costs.
NICE DCV for high-performance streaming provides secure, high-performance access to applications. NICE DCV delivers a fluid interactive experience, and automatically adjusts to network conditions.

Pricing & availability
With AppStream 2.0, you pay only for the streaming instances that you use, and a small monthly fee per authorized user. The charge for streaming instances depends on the instance type that you select, and the maximum number of concurrent users that will access their applications.

A user fee is charged per unique authorized user accessing applications in a region in any given month. The user fee covers the Microsoft RDS SAL license, and may be waived if you bring your own RDS CAL licenses via Microsoft’s license mobility program. AppStream 2.0 offers a Free Tier, which provides an admin experience for getting started. The Free Tier includes 40 hours per month, for up to two months. For more information, see this page.

AppStream 2.0 is available today in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and AP-Northeast (Tokyo) Regions. You can try the AppStream 2.0 end user experience for free today, with no setup required, by accessing sample applications already installed on AppStream 2.0 To access the Try It Now experience, log in with your AWS account and choose an app to get started.

To learn more about AppStream 2.0, visit the AppStream page.

— Gene Farrell, Vice President, AWS Enterprise Applications & EC2 Windows

Noise

Tag Archives: Amazon AppStream

Delivering Graphics Apps with Amazon AppStream 2.0

Graphics Instance Types on AppStream 2.0

Example graphics instance set up with Siemens NX

Step 1: Create a file share to load and save design files

Step 2: Create an AppStream 2.0 image with Siemens NX installed

Step 3: Create an AppStream 2.0 fleet and stack

Step 4: Invite users to access Siemens NX through a browser

Step 5: Validate the setup

Summary

Amazon AppStream 2.0 Launch Recap – Domain Join, Simple Network Setup, and Lots More

AWS Webinars – January 2017 (Bonus: December Recap)

The collective thoughts of the interwebz