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DCV

DCV enhances the graphics functions of 3D applications on Linux and Microsoft Windows on both OpenGL and DirectX to display complex visual data across multiple, simultaneous distributed displays using low-bandwidth networks. NICE DCV is the remote 3D visualization technology that enables Technical Computing users to connect to OpenGL or DirectX applications running in a data center.

Using NICE DCV, you can remotely work on 3D interactive applications, fully accelerated by highend GPUs on workstations, blades or servers. No matter if you are accessing high-end OpenGL modeling applications or simple viewers, NICE DCV lets you connect quickly and securely from anywhere and experience high frame rates, even with low bandwidth standard Internet connections.

The product supports both Microsoft and Linux systems, enabling collaborative capabilities in heterogeneous environments. Moreover, it is perfectly integrated into NICE EnginFrame, leveraging 2D/3D capabilities over the Web, including the ability to share a session with other users for collaborative or support purposes.

Features

• Collaboration

Support for multiple, collaborative endstations. The set of endstations can be dynamic, with connections being made and others being dropped throughout the DCV session

• H.264-based encoding

Greatly reduces bandwidth consumption

• Exploits the latest NVIDIA Grid SDK technologies

Improves performances and reduces system load. Uses the NVIDIA H.264 hardware encoder (on Kepler and GRID cards)

• Full Desktop Remotization

Uses the high-performance NICE DCV protocol for the remotization of the full desktop (not only for the 3D windows as in previous versions)

• Support for NVIDIA vGPU technology

Simplifies the deployment of Windows VMs with full application support

• High Quality Updates

Support for high quality updates when network and processor conditions allow

• Image Only Transport

Transmission of final rendered image, rather than geometry and scene information, providing insulation and protection of proprietary customer information

• User Selectable Compression Levels

Ability to specify the compression level used to send the final image over the wire to the endstation

• Pluggable Compression Capability)

Pluggable compression/decompression (codec) framework, eventually allowing the image compression/decompression algorithms to be replaced

• Smart-card remotization

Seamlessly access the local smart card, using the standard PC/SC interface. Use smart cards for encrypting emails, signing documents and authenticating against remote systems

• Adaptive server-side resolution

Automatically adapt the server-side screen resolution to the size of the viewer window

• USB remotization (Preview)

Plug USB devices on the client side and use them on the remote desktop

Typical Deployment

DCV uses an application host to run OpenGL or DirectX graphics applications and transmits the output to one or more end stations that connect to the application host over the network.

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The application host sends updates (in the form of pixel data) to each connected end station. End stations send user events (such as mouse or keyboard actions) to the host. Each end station is responsible for: • displaying one or more application windows running on the host machine; • sending user interaction with an application host for processing.

Modes of Operation

Technology	Hypervisors	Application Compatability	OS Support
Bare Metal or GPU Pass-through	All	Maximum	Linux and Windows	Pros: Best performance Limitations: One VM per GPU
NICE External Rendering Server	All	Limited	Windows	Pros: Best Consolidation GPU sharing Dynamic GPU load balancing on multi-GPU hosts Support for GPU applicance mode Limitations: No support for DirectX applications
NVIDIA vGPU	XenServer 6.2 SP1	Excellent	Windows	Pros: Good performance GPU sharing Limitations: Requires NVIDIA GRID cards and a specific hypervisor

NICE External Rendering Server

DCV application hosts can optionally be configured to delegate the actual 3D rendering to a separate host, the rendering host. In this case the OpenGL application runs on an application host which does not provide 3D hardware acceleration and delegates the OpenGL rendering to a rendering host equipped with one or more 3D accelerated graphic adapters.

This configuration enables virtual machines to act as application hosts even if the virtual hardware emulated by the hypervisor does not provide OpenGL acceleration.

The rendering host:

• receives OpenGL commands from the applications running on the application servers;
• sends the 3D image updates (in the form of pixel data) to each connected end station.

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Installation Prerequisites

Basically DCV requires the following hardware systems :

• a physical application host machine equipped with 3D accelerated video adapters and capable of running the OpenGL or DirectX applications; or a virtual application host machine equipped with 3D accelerated video adapters using GPU pass-through and capable of running the OpenGL or DirectX applications;
• one or more remote machines (end stations), each of which is connected to an output display device;
• a network connection (WAN/LAN) between the application host and the end station.

For the specific requirements for each mode of operation, please refer to the manual

End Station Requirements

Operating system: Linux

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x, 6.x, 7.x 32/64-bit
• SUSE Enterprise Server 11 SP2 32/64-bit

Windows

• Microsoft Windows 7 32/64-bit
• Microsoft Windows 8, 8.1 32/64-bit
• Microsoft Windows 10 32/64-bit

Mac OS X

• Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion (10.7), Mountain Lion (10.8), Mavericks (10.9), Yosemite (10.10)

The DCV installer includes and automatically installs RealVNC Visualization Edition 4.6.x (Viewer).

The application host and its end stations can run different operating systems. Different versions of DCV Server and DCV End Station are compatible but some features may not be available when not using the latest version. DCV is compatible with many plain-VNC clients from third parties. When using such clients, 3D images are delivered to the clients using the standard VNC protocol and therefore with reduced perfomance.

Note: For each operation mode, there are probably additional requirements for the server as well as the end station. Please refer to the documentation to find them out.

X Server Requirements

On Linux, the host equipped with 3D accelerated video adapters must run an accelerated X Server configured according to these requirements:

• NVIDIA drivers must be correctly working on this display.
• in case of multiple GPUs on the same node the suggested configuration is a single X Server for all GPUs, one Screen for each GPU. Example: :0.0 for the first accelerated GPU, :0.1 for the second accelerated GPU..
• local UNIX connections to the 3D accelerated X Server displays must be granted to the users of the 3D applications. DCV libraries run inside the 3D applications launched by the users. They redirect 3D calls to the accelerated display and so the applications processes run by the users must be able to access it. When running dcvadmin enable, DCV automatically searches for well-known X or display manager startup scripts and adds a call to /opt/nice/dcv/bin/dcvxgrantaccess. By default dcvxgrantaccess executes xhost +local:. So when X is launched the display access is granted. It is possible to change this behaviour, for example to restrict the access to a subset of users, providing a custom implementation of dcvxgrantaccess.
• color depth must be 24-bit
• only when using Native Display mode on Linux with VNC in Service mode additional configuration is required to enable the vnc.so module.

DCV Server Installation Guide

On Linux

• log in as root on the node via SSH or directly from the console. Switch to runlevel 3:

init 3

• run the installer and follow the instructions

sh nice-dcv-2016.0-xxxx.run

The installer will perform checks including the NVIDIA card and driver presence. In case the NVIDIA driver is not found, the installer can download the latest version from NVIDIA website and install it automatically. If the host is not connected to the Internet or you want to provide your own version of the NVIDIA driver, place the NVIDIA driver installer in the same directory of the DCV one and launch the DCV installer. The DCV installer provides a kernel module to remotize USB devices. If DKMS is installed on the system, the installer will ask whether to handle the module update using DKMS. If the administrator wants to have more control over the kernel module updates, the script dcvusbdriverupdate is provided. Call this script every time the kernel is updated. At the end of the installation, the diagnostic script dcvdiag will be automatically launched. Check the output and, in case of any error or warning, apply the suggested fixes. A log of the installation, including the diagnostic information, will be saved and its location printed in the last page of the installer. On successful completion of the installation, the files are installed in the /opt/nice/dcv directory.

Note: DCV is automatically enabled on completion of the installation process. In case you update your kernel version or graphics drivers, run the dcvadmin enable command as root to re-enable the software.

On Windows TODO

DCV End Station Installation Guide

Installing Linux End Stations

• download the DCV End Station .run archive from https://www.nice-software.com/ dcv
• from a terminal go to the directory containing the installation files
• run the installer as the root user and follow the instructions:

sh nice-dcv-endstation-2016.0-xxx.run

Using Desktop Cloud Visualization

On Linux

To start the end station on Linux, click on the programs menu and select Internet > VNC Viewer. To launch the end station from command line, use the vncviewer command. This is the syntax of the vncviewer command is:

vncviewer [<servername[:portnum]>] [<other viewer options>] [-h]