Virtual Workstations Video Transcript - Leadership Team Meeting

Transcript for the Virtual Workstations Video Leadership Team Meeting: Virtual Workstations Paulo: Hello, team. Today, we will discuss how we can improve our process for provisioning work computers, or workstations, for content creation and game development. We are currently experiencing three ma...

Transcript for the Virtual Workstations Video Leadership Team Meeting: Virtual Workstations Paulo: Hello, team. Today, we will discuss how we can improve our process for provisioning work computers, or workstations, for content creation and game development. We are currently experiencing three major challenges: First, ordering and shipping new workstations and components to remote locations is expensive and inefficient. As our workforce continues to expand, this could begin to cause problems in our development cycle. The lengthy delays and initial investment when ordering new equipment make performing hardware refreshes difficult for our team. Several developers have privately expressed frustration over poor performance from their outdated machines. Finally, the employees who are able to work remotely on their physical workstations are less productive. Their home networks become a bottleneck when transferring massive file sets to and from our on-premises data center. Would everyone on the call agree? Kwesi: Yes, I think it’s safe to say our teams have all experienced some of these challenges. Paulo: Okay. Well, to help alleviate these challenges, we researched multiple solutions. We found that deploying virtual workstations using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, or Amazon EC2, is a strong option. Virtual workstations offer several advantages. We can deploy and configure them in minutes, which can eliminate some of the current waiting time for onboarding talent whether they live nearby or in another country. Replacing and upgrading virtual workstations is more feasible, as there’s no need to purchase new hardware. Also, files would transfer directly between these virtual workstations and our version control system. Remote developers would no longer need to transfer massive files using their home networks, which should help improve productivity and overall work experience. Kwesi: I am a little skeptical about the performance and slow network connections when it comes to virtual workstations. Has your team performed any tests designing and building complex 3D worlds on these virtual machines? Paulo: Great question and valid concern. The good news is that in recent years, last-mile internet and © 2022, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. streaming technology have improved enough to make this possible. Using remote desktop and application streaming technologies like Teradici, Parsec, or NICE DCV, our developers and artists can have a robust working experience regardless of their location. In fact, I have prepared a demonstration of what these virtual workstations are like for today’s meeting. We deployed sample architecture provided by AWS to explore how a cloud-focused game development experience might feel. The sample helped us deploy a virtual workstation with best-practice security as well as the rest of a build pipeline, which we can discuss over the next few weeks. We chose to deploy a marketplace Amazon Machine Image, or AMI, with Unreal Engine installed to perform our usability tests with the same software our developers use. As you can tell, we experienced minimal latency, hovering around 20 ms, which felt responsive. The desktop streaming application uses a dynamic frame rate to maximize efficiency. As we perform more actions on screen, the frame rate can approach up to 60 frames per second, providing a smooth experience for the user. To show what the work experience might feel like, we decided to open up a sample game from Unreal and move around a bit. I would have to say it felt like using a local machine. If we choose to go this route, all workstations—both physical and virtual—will have connections to our version control system to ensure that teams are synchronized. The goal is to minimize any additional burden on our creative teams, and make the experience similar to, or better than how we operate now. Saanvi: Well done to you and your team, Paulo, for proactively doing this analysis and research. It sounds like this solution can support more flexible work arrangements for domestic and international talent, without sacrificing productivity or workstation performance. Nikki: Agreed, thank you Paulo. I am excited to see what you have in store for our next meeting. © 2022, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.