• Related resources (p. 164)
Prerequisites
Estimated time: 1 hour
Prerequisites
Before starting this tutorial, you need to have the following:
• A studio deployed in Nimble Studio, following the instructions in Deploying a new studio with StudioBuilder (p. 28).
• The admin password for your studio’s AWS Managed Microsoft AD.
Step 1: Log in to Nimble Studio portal as Admin
The first step to configuring Deadline is to log in to the Nimble Studio portal as Admin and launch a Windows virtual workstation (an instance).
To connect to the Nimble Studio portal 1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.
2. Go to Services → Nimble Studio .
3. Choose the Go to Studio manager button.
Step 1: Log in to Nimble Studio portal as Admin
6. Log in to the Nimble Studio portal using your AWS Managed Microsoft AD admin credentials.
a. User name: Admin.
b. Password: <the password you created during your studio deploy>.
Step 2: Accept the EULA
Step 2: Accept the EULA
Step 2: Accept the EULA
NoteIf you have already completed the Adding studio users (p. 92) tutorial, then most likely you have already accepted the EULA and can skip this step and continue to Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation (p. 147). If you have not completed the other tutorial, continue below.
1. Log in to the Nimble Studio Portal and choose the Launch tab.
2. In the upper right-hand corner of the Nimble Studio portal, choose your user name.
Step 2: Accept the EULA
3. Choose Settings from the dropdown menu.
4. Choose EULA from the left navigation pane.
Step 2: Accept the EULA
5. Choose and read each agreement in the list.
6. After you have read all the agreements, select the check box next to I have read and agree to the terms of the End User License Agreements above.
7. Choose Confirm.
a. The status of each of the agreements will change to “Accepted”.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
1. Choose the Launch tab from the left navigation pane.
2. Open the three dot menu on the Workstation-Default card.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
3. Choose Launch with…
4. Leave Instance Type at the default setting.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
b. You will have to download the NICE DCV client before connecting to your workstation. For more information about the NICE DCV client, as well as links to download, see NICE DCV Clients.
7. Choose Launch.
8. A status bar will appear that shows you the progress of launching your virtual workstation. This might take up to 15 minutes.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
To connect to the virtual workstation
1. When your virtual workstation is ready, a new window will appear reminding you that the client must be installed.
2. Choose Start streaming now.
a. If you haven’t installed the NICE DCV desktop client, choose Download here and install the client first.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
3. When a window pops up in your browser, prompting you to open NICE DCV, choose Open to continue.
The exact wording of this might vary depending on what browser you are using. See below for an example of a pop-up in Chrome:
4. When the NICE DCV Client application opens in a new window, you will now see the Windows login screen.
a. If another window pops up, choose Proceed.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
5. Open the instance menu near the top right of the screen and choose Ctrl + Alt + Del.
Important
Don’t press Ctrl+Alt+Delete on your keyboard. Doing so sends the command to your local computer, not to your workstation.
Step 3: Launch a virtual workstation
6. For User name, enter Admin.
7. For Password, enter the password that you created during your studio deploy, then press enter.
Step 4: Open Deadline and create groups
Step 4: Open Deadline and create groups
Now that you’re logged in to your virtual workstation, the first thing you will do is open Deadline Monitor. This is the main interface that you and your artists will use to change your render farm settings and monitor the status of renders on your farm.
In Deadline Monitor, you must create a group for each render fleet in your studio. By default, you only create one render fleet during your deploy with StudioBuilder, but if you created more than one, you should repeat these steps for each fleet that you created.
To open Deadline Monitor
1. Open the Start menu, then choose Thinkbox → Deadline Monitor.
a. When Deadline Monitor starts opening, a window will appear indicating that the system has created a new user account.
2. Choose OK to continue.
a. The Deadline Monitor window will open.
Step 4: Open Deadline and create groups
Step 4: Open Deadline and create groups
3. Choose Tools→superuser Mode.
4. Next, choose Tools→ Manage Groups…
5. In the window that appears, choose New.
6. Enter the name of your render fleet and then choose OK.
Step 5: Adjust worker settings
7. Repeat for any additional render fleets that you created during your deploy with StudioBuilder.
8. Choose OK when you are finished adding groups.
Step 5: Adjust worker settings
Next you will adjust settings on your render workers to allow you or your artists to connect to them and view the worker logs. This will make it possible to view more log information for each worker and will
Step 5: Adjust worker settings
4. Select the check box next to Use Worker’s IP address for Remote Control.
Step 6: (Windows only) Set mapped paths
Step 6: (Windows only) Set mapped paths
NoteYou only need to complete this step if you are using Windows virtual workstations to submit renders to your farm. If you are only using Linux virtual workstations, you can skip this step.
Next, you will set mapped paths for the shared storage that connects to your Windows workstations. By default, StudioBuilder will create one Amazon FSx file system, the Z: drive, when you deploy your studio.
If you’ve added additional storage to your studio, such as a second Amazon FSx file system, you will need to map paths for it as well.
1. While still in the Configure Repository Options window, choose Mapped Paths from the list on the left.
a. The mapped paths options will appear.
Step 6: (Windows only) Set mapped paths
2. Under Global Rules, choose Add.
3. In the window that appears, enter the following:
a. For Replace Path enter Z:
b. For Windows Path enter Z:
c. For Linux Path enter /mnt/fsxshare
Step 6: (Windows only) Set mapped paths
4. Confirm your entries and then choose OK.
NoteThe entries above are for mapping the default Amazon FSx file system that is automatically created when you deploy your studio with StudioBuilder. If that is the only file system in your studio, then you are done and your artists should be ready to render.
However, if you created additional file systems using the instructions in the Adding a new Amazon FSx file system (p. 435) tutorial, you will need to add another rule to Deadline for those file systems and enter the appropriate path files. See the instructions below.
Add global rules for additional file systems
First, you will need to find the path values for your additional file systems in the Nimble Studio console.
1. Go to Services → Nimble Studio .
2. Choose the Go to Studio manager button.
3. Choose Studio resources in the left navigation pane.
4. In the File storage section, choose the Component ID for the additional file system that you are interested in. For example, you might have added another file system to your studio and named it
“Prod”:
Related resources
5. On the File storage details page for the file system, scroll down to the File storage configuration section and notice the Linux mount point and the Windows mount drive.
6. Go back to the Configure Repository Options window in the Deadline Monitor on your virtual workstation.
7. Under Global Rules, choose the Add button again and enter the following:
a. Use the Windows mount drive as both the Replace Path and the Windows Path, but make sure to add a colon to the end. For example, X:.
b. Use the Linux mount point as the Linux Path.
Related resources
• NICE DCV Clients - NICE DCV
Maintain your studio
Admin tutorials for Amazon Nimble Studio
Welcome to the Amazon Nimble Studio admin tutorial series!
The admin tutorials guide you through the process of deploying and configuring a new studio, adding users, and customizing infrastructure to fit your team’s needs.
Now that you have your basic Nimble Studio deployment, it’s time to start customizing your setup to fit your team’s needs. This next tutorial series explains how to install new software, set up a license server, add additional storage volumes, transfer existing data to Nimble Studio, and configure advanced user management.
If you’re an artist who wants to learn how to use studio settings and create your first render, see Artist tutorials for Amazon Nimble Studio (p. 511).
Topics
• Maintaining your studio (p. 165)
• Managing your workstations (p. 218)
• Working with license servers (p. 253)
• Software specific installation tips (p. 274)
• Working with render farms (p. 288)
• Update AMIs: Setting up (p. 306)
• Update storage in Nimble Studio (p. 435)
Maintaining your studio
After creating your Amazon Nimble Studio, you need to maintain it. This includes changing the admin password, updating your StudioBuilder version, backing up your studio, modifying your launch profiles, and deleting your studio. The tutorials in this section explain how to do that, and more.
Topics
• Change admin password in AWS Directory Service (p. 165)
• Update to latest StudioBuilder version (p. 169)
• How to back up your studio data (p. 178)
• Modifying launch profiles (p. 200)
• How to delete a studio (p. 204)
Change admin password in AWS Directory Service
This tutorial is for admins who need to change their password or a policy for their AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory.
Change admin password or policies
If you want to reset a user password for your AWS Directory Service, see Reset a user password in the AWS Directory Service Administration Guide.
Contents
• Prerequisites (p. 166)
• Reset an admin password for AWS Directory Service (p. 166)
• Using password policies for AWS Directory Service (p. 168)
• Supported policy settings for AWS Managed Microsoft AD (p. 168)
Prerequisites
• You will need an AWS account with admin permissions to use the AWS Management Console.
• You will need to have an account for AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory.
StudioBuilder automatically creates that account for you. You will see that account by following Step 1 below.
Reset an admin password for AWS Directory Service
Resetting your admin password involves two steps. You must follow both steps in this section to reset your password.
Step 1: Update admin password in AWS Directory Service
1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.
2. Go to Services → Directory Service .
3. When the Directories page opens, select the directory associated with the admin account that you want to modify.
4. Choose Actions → Reset user password.
a. When a new page opens, go to the Username field and enter Admin.
b. In the New password field, enter a new password. Be sure to follow these requirements:
i. The password must be eight or more characters long.
ii. The password must contain characters from three of the following four categories: Uppercase characters A-Z (Latin alphabet); lowercase characters a-z (Latin alphabet); digits 0-9; special characters (such as , $, #, %).
iii. Remember this password, because you will need it next, in Step 2: Update your Secret in Secrets Manager.
c. After you’ve confirmed the new password, choose the Reset password button and the Directories page will open.
NoteIf you are using StudioBuilder version 1.1.3 or later, you can skip Step 2: Update your Secret in Secrets Manager, and go directly to Using password policies for AWS Directory Service (p. 168).
Step 2: Update your Secret in Secrets Managers
Important
If you are using a StudioBuilder version prior to version 1.1.3, you must complete this Step 2
Change admin password or policies
1. On the AWS Management Console home page, search for and select the Secrets Manager service.
2. Search for StudioBuilder-SecretForAD and select it when it appears in the Secret name list.
3. On the Secrets page, scroll down to the Secret value section and choose Retrieve secret value.
4. Choose Edit to open the Edit secret value module.
5. In the Edit secret value module, remove your old password.
6. Type in the new password that you created earlier, in Step 1. Update admin password in AWS Directory Service.
Change admin password or policies
This completes the process of resetting your AWS Directory Service password. To modify policies for AWS Directory Service, continue to the following section of this page.
Using password policies for AWS Directory Service
If you don’t configure any password policies in your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory, Active Directory uses the default domain group policy. This policy includes the following settings:
Policy Setting
Enforce password history 24 passwords remembered
Maximum password age 42 days
Minimum password age 1 day
Minimum password length 7 characters
Password must meet complexity requirements Activated Store passwords using reversible encryption Deactivated
NoteThe 42-day maximum password age includes the admin password.
Sometimes admins want to modify a policy setting to allow for different levels of user access.
For example, senior managers who regularly access confidential information might need strict settings.
On the other hand, users that need access to low sensitivity information might need less strict policies.
One such policy change might include increasing the maximum password age, so that it doesn’t need resetting at 42 days.
Step 3: Modify password policies in AWS Managed Microsoft AD
User accounts that are a member of the AWS Delegated Fine Grained Password Policy Administrators security group can use the following procedure to assign policies to users and security groups.
To assign password policies to your users:
1. Launch Active Directory administrative center (ADAC) from any managed EC2 instance that you joined to your AWS Managed Microsoft AD domain.
2. Switch to the Tree View and navigate to System\Password Settings Container.
3. Double-click on the fine-grained policy that you want to edit.
4. Click Add to edit the policy properties, and add users or security groups to the policy.
a. For more information about the default fine-grained policies provided with AWS Managed Microsoft AD, see AWS pre-defined password policies.
5. To verify that the password policy has been applied, run the following PowerShell command: Get-ADUserResultantPasswordPolicy -Identity 'username'
Supported policy settings for AWS Managed Microsoft AD
AWS Managed Microsoft AD includes five fine-grained policies with a non-editable precedence value. The policies have a number of properties that you can configure to enforce the strength of passwords, and account lockout actions in the event of login failures.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
You can assign the policies to zero or more AWS Managed Microsoft AD groups. If an end user is a member of multiple groups and receives more than one password policy, AWS Managed Microsoft AD enforces the policy with the lowest precedence value.
Important
We don’t recommend that you set the maximum password age to -1. This presents a security risk.
Password policy properties
You can edit the following properties in your password policies to conform to the compliance standards that meet your business needs.
• Enforce password history
• Minimum password length
• Minimum password age
• Maximum password age
• Store passwords using reversible encryption
• Password must meet complexity requirements
You can’t modify the precedence values for these policies.
For more details about how these settings affect password enforcement, see AD DS: Fine-grained password policies on the Microsoft TechNet website. For general information about these policies, see Password policy on the Microsoft TechNet website.
Account lockout policies
You can also modify the following properties of your password policies to specify if, and how, Active Directory should lock out users from an account after login failures:
• Number of failed logon attempts allowed
• Account lockout duration
• Reset failed logon attempts after some duration
For general information about these policies, see Account lockout policy on the Microsoft TechNet website.
For more information about modifying password age, length, or other requirements, see Supported policy settings in the AWS Directory Service Administration Guide.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
This admin tutorial will show you how to update your studio to the latest version of StudioBuilder.
Contents
• Prerequisites (p. 170)
• Step 1: Launch new instance with the latest StudioBuilder version (p. 170)
• Step 2: Check updates to your launch profiles (p. 174)
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
Prerequisites
To complete this tutorial, you must have an active studio from Amazon Nimble Studio deployed in your AWS account.
Step 1: Launch new instance with the latest StudioBuilder version
The first step to updating your studio to the latest release is to launch a new instance of StudioBuilder from AWS Marketplace.
1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console.
2. Search for AWS Marketplace Subscriptions.
3. In the search results, right-click on AWS Marketplace Subscriptions and select Open Link in New Tab.
4. After the new browser window opens, find Nimble Studio StudioBuilder and choose Launch new instance.
a. When the Launch new instance page opens, the latest version of StudioBuilder will show under Software version.
5. In the Region section, select the Region where you want to deploy this version.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
6. Choose Continue to launch through EC2. Your options for launching will open in a page titled Step 2:
Choose an Instance Type.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
8. Choose Next: Configure Instance Details from the lower right corner.
9. When Step 3: Configure Instance Details opens, be sure that the Network field shows the default VPC.
10.Use the Auto-assign Public IP dropdown to select Enable.
11.For the IAM role field, select the role that you created during deployment. For example, in the Deploying a new studio tutorial with StudioBuilder, we used StudioBuilder_Instance_Admin_Role.
12.Choose Review and Launch.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
13.When Step 7: Review Instance Launch opens, choose Launch.
14.In the window that pops up, choose Proceed without a key pair from the first dropdown.
15.Choose the check box next to “I acknowledge that…” because you will not need the password.
16.Next, choose Launch Instances.
17.On the Launch Status page, choose the View Instances button at the bottom of the page.
18.When the Instances page opens, the Status check column will show Initializing. After the process is complete, the status will change to 2/2 checks passed.
19.While you are waiting, change the name of the instance by clicking on the edit icon (which looks like a small square).
a. Enter the name and include the new version number, then choose Save.
Update to latest StudioBuilder version
Step 2: Check updates to your launch profiles
Before you complete the update, it is important to keep track of the modifications that you’ve made to the RenderWorker-Default and Workstation-Default launch profiles.
The new version will automatically replace the RenderWorker-Default and Workstation-Default, so those names will remain the same. Therefore, in this section, we’ll create a copy of the old version and rename that, so we can compare the changes.
1. Go to Services → Nimble Studio .
2. Select Studio manager → Launch profiles.
3. Select RenderWorker-Default and in the Actions dropdown, select Copy to new.
4. After the Create launch profile opens, change the name in the Launch profile name input field to TEMPORARY RENDER WORKER.
5. Now, you’ll do the same for the other launch profile:
a. Go back to the Launch profiles page and select Workstation-Default.
b. In the Actions dropdown, select Copy to new.
c. After the Create launch profile opens, change the Launch profile name to TEMPORARY WORKSTATION DEFAULT.
6. If you created your studio with additional storage, added it to your custom launch profiles, and
6. If you created your studio with additional storage, added it to your custom launch profiles, and