Performing an AWS AppStream 2.0 proof of concept
Our customer identified an opportunity to move their Windows-based desktop application, a critical component of their business portfolio, to AWS. They engaged Cevo to perform a proof of concept for an efficient solution to transform this existing application in a secure, cost effective and scalable way.
AWS AppStream 2.0
Implementation
End User Compute
Cevo NexusTM solution
Software Development
Industry
Our customer is an Australian technology company that provides market-leading software to the financial services industry, servicing customers around the world.
Business challenge
A critical component of our customer’s business portfolio is a Windows-based desktop application that supports the day-to-day, front and back-office administration of financial service organisations. Due to the highly customisable nature of the software, the nuances involved in on-site hosting, and the complexity and strictly regulated nature of the financial services industry, the onboarding process for new clients was slow. This resulted in the organisation being constrained in their ability to efficiently deploy, run and support application instances in production at scale, with potential to miss out on opportunities for new projects and customers. There was also a need to uplift the application’s security posture.
To address these challenges, our customer embarked on a journey to modernise the application, transforming it from its Windows-based desktop form, to a modern, AWS cloud-based solution. Initially, the organisation explored converting the existing desktop application into a web-based version, however a design and development review estimated this would take a number of years to complete.
The company had previously explored AWS AppStream 2.0 as a potential solution to this problem, however needed a proof of concept (POC) performed to confirm whether it could be used to move the application to AWS and understand the following:
- How AppStream 2.0 can help to reduce operational overheads
- How AWS Elastic File System (EFS) can be used for network file sharing with AppStream 2.0 and Linux web form
- How AppStream 2.0 can be embedded into the web-based solution for a seamless user experience
- How users can experience a seamless login process between their web form and AppStream 2.0
- The most suitable fleet instance type
- How AppStream 2.0 can help improve the security posture of the solution
- Costs associated with using AppStream 2.0
Solution
Cevo was engaged by this organisation to perform a proof of concept to help accelerate and provide support for the evaluation and development journey of the application in an efficient, scalable, secure and cost optimised way.
The engagement began with a one day workshop to ideate the high-level solution design, including establishing clear goals and tasks that would need to be performed.
Cevo’s experts then supported the design and build of a secure solution where AppStream 2.0 fleet instances were launched in a private subnet in customer VPC. An AppStream 2.0 private interface endpoint for streaming sessions was securely provisioned on a private network. The client network on the AppStream 2.0 interface endpoint was whitelisted so streaming sessions could only be accessed through the VPN or the internal network.
Working alongside the customer’s internal team, Cevo’s experts then installed a desktop application on the base image using AppStream Image Builder, to build the custom image to be used by AppStream 2.0 fleet instances.
Next, Cevo’s experts embedded the streaming session on a sample web page, following documentation provided by AWS, which was later built as a custom page for AppStream 2.0 to ensure a seamless user experience.
The next challenge was using EFS as a network file share on Windows-based AppStream 2.0 fleet instances and the Linux-based web portal. A Samba server was implemented as an intermediate server to ensure EFS was available for the Windows systems. The following architecture was used to build this solution.
Outcomes
At the time of writing, this customer was in the process of deciding which tool would be best suited to their requirements. This engagement however, resulted in a successful proof of concept of AppStream 2.0 which could deliver the following benefits:
- Significant reduction in operational overheads, with much of the heavy lifting of AppStream managed by AWS
- Strengthened security by storing data on AWS instead of vulnerable endpoint devices
- Significant reduction in streaming costs compared to Citrix
- Rapid validation of the organisation’s requirements and solution design
- Secure, reliable and scalable access to applications from any location
- Ability to easily embed streaming sessions in web applications
- Increased operational security via a restricted customer interaction service
- Reduction in manual patching and maintenance of a VDI fleet
- Opportunity for cost optimisation with on-demand cloud scalability with a range of compute, memory and storage options
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