Skip to content

Virtual Desktops

Give your team a full Windows or Linux desktop in the cloud, powered by Amazon DCV. Work from any browser, scale up to powerful GPU hardware when you need it, and pay only for what you use. No workstation to ship, install, or maintain.

What you can do

  • Create and manage desktops

    Launch a Windows or Linux desktop in minutes, then pause, schedule, resize, or terminate it whenever you like, so you only pay while you are working.

    Launch a desktop

  • Ready-to-use Software Stacks

    Pick a pre-built image from the catalog and start working right away, no setup required.

    Browse the catalog

  • Bring your own applications

    Build custom images with your applications already installed, so every desktop launches ready for your team.

    Create custom images

  • Share a live desktop

    Invite a colleague into a running desktop for pairing or support, with time-boxed, permission-scoped access you stay in control of.

    Share a session

  • Save and resume

    Capture a desktop as a restore point, shut it down to stop paying for compute, and pick up exactly where you left off later.

    Save your desktop

  • Faster desktops with pools

    Hand users a ready desktop instantly or in seconds from a pre-provisioned pool, trading a little cost for a lot of speed.

    Speed up launches

  • Hardware and USB control

    Decide which instance types and physical USB devices are allowed, so desktops match your security and performance needs.

    Hardware Profiles & USB

  • Fine-tune what users can pick

    Set the instance types, storage, and networks available for each Software Stack to keep costs and access on guardrails.

    Virtual Desktop Profiles

See your desktops

Open Virtual Desktops in the left sidebar to see your desktops. Each running desktop is shown as a tile with a live thumbnail, quick-connect options (open in the browser or via the native DCV client), its instance details, and a Share Session button.

Supported operating systems

Operating System Version Supported
Windows Windows Server 2019 ✅ (Windows 10 Style & Appareance)
Windows Windows Server 2022 ✅ (Windows 10 Style & Appareance)
Windows Windows Server 2025 ✅ (Windows 11 Style & Appareance)
Linux Amazon Linux 2 ✅
Linux Amazon Linux 2023 ✅
Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 ✅
Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 ✅
Linux Rocky 8 ✅
Linux Rocky 9 ✅
Linux Ubuntu 22.04 ✅
Linux Ubuntu 24.04 ✅
Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ⚠️ Tested successfully but OS is End-of-Life and won't receive updates from Red Hat, meaning destkop may stop provisioning in the future without notice.
Linux CentOS 7 ⚠️ Tested successfully but OS is End-of-Life and won't receive updates from Red Hat, meaning destkop may stop provisioning in the future without notice.

Virtual Desktop Automation

  • EDH will automatically determine the EC2 Instance type and install the required packages.

  • Supported Linux and Windows OS have been validated on Non-GPU, GPU (Nvidia) and GPU (AMD).

  • Supported Linux OS have been tested for both Intel (x86_64) and Graviton (aarch64) architectures.

Bootstrap Sequence

Here is a high level of the bootstrap sequence of the virtual Desktop machines. Click here to view Windows/Linux advanced bootstrap sequence details for VDI nodes.

  graph TD;
      A[New Virtual Desktop] --> B{Architecture?};
      B-- x86_64 -->C[Install x86_64 packages];
      B-- aarch64 -->D[Install aarch64 packages];
      C--> E{Has GPU?};
      D-->E
      E-- Nvidia -->F[Install Cuda+nvidia drivers];
      E-- AMD -->G[Install AMD drivers];
      E-- None -->H[Desktop ready];
      F --> H ;
      G --> H;