Running VMIX on AWS! (Amazon Web Services EC2)
243With recent happenings in the world, a big shift has taken place with many online productions adapting to cloud-based workflows. Today I’ll be providing a rundown on how to get VMIX up and running on AWS EC2 and things you may need to consider.
First off you will need to sign up for an AWS account and attach a Credit card as this AWS solution has you pay by use. Once that's done, you will be able to view your EC2 dashboard.
I highly recommend launching a micro instance on EC2 to learn the basics of the interface and to get an idea of how the system works at the base level. Once you have your account made you will need to request a VCPU limit for each server you plan to use on AWS. Start at 16 / 32 and scale from there depending on the workload you see.
This will take a couple days but once it's complete, you will be able to launch a G4 instance.
Start off by searching the AWS marketplace for an AMI that has Windows Server 2019 and Nvidia GRID drivers installed. I suggest looking for the Quadro workstation AMI as this has everything covered. Trying to install these GRID drivers manually can be a painful task to someone inexperienced with Windows interfaces like Powershell and other heavy text-based command editors.
Once you have found an AMI you will be able to launch it via the EC2 manager, from there you can select an instance type. You are wanting to look for a G4 2x / 4x large unit, anything lower will bottleneck heavily on the CPU after just a couple inputs are added to the Vmix.
You can assign a subnet if you are wanting to connect multiple instances to one and other. More info can be found on https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/index.html
Storage can be left at 30GB for this tutorial, once you are comfortable, you can look to expand your storage and use the EBS for snapshots that will allow you to deploy this preset to other AWS servers.
It's important that you should NOT allow all IPs access to your Server and I suggest whitelisting only your desktop at home / the office and any other remote producers you may be working with. I only use anywhere as I don't wish for my home IP to be on the video.
Once the server is finished booting which will take roughly 5 to 10 minutes you will be able to connect with RDP by downloading a single file and decrypting a password with a permission file.
Once you are into the server you will need to enable the sound service to receive your audio output. You can then download Vmix and install Net Framework 3.5 via Server Manager. With that, you can install Vmix and ensure that High input performance is enabled and the Tesla GPU is being detected. Playback a MP4 to ensure the drivers are working and congrats! You now have a cloud instance of Vmix working!
Web Controller note, apologies I recorded this pretty late in the night, that was the internal IP I copied and not the external. With the external IP and then the :8088 port you will be able to access the web controller as long as your IP is whitelisted.