NICE DCV Servers

The NICE DCV server is available for Windows and Linux. Both servers offer similar features, but there are some differences. Choose the NICE DCV server that best meets your needs. The following table compares the features supported by the Windows and Linux NICE DCV servers.

Topics

Requirements
Supported Features

Requirements

For a good user experience with NICE DCV, ensure that your server meets the following minimum requirements. Keep in mind that your users' experience is largely dependent on the number of pixels streamed from the NICE DCV server to the NICE DCV client.

If you are installing the NICE DCV server on an Amazon EC2 instance, we recommend that you use an Amazon EC2 G3, G4dn, G4ad, or G5 instance type. These instance types offer GPUs that support hardware-based OpenGL and GPU sharing. For more information, see Amazon EC2 G3 Instances, Amazon EC2 G4 instances, and Amazon EC2 G5 Instances.

You can install the NICE DCV server on any other instance type, but there might be screen resolution limitations. To bypass this limitation on Windows Server 2016, download and install the NICE DCV Virtual Display Driver for EC2. On Windows Server 2019 or later running DCV 2023.1 or later, no additional action is needed.

Your server must meet the minimum requirements listed in the following table.

	Windows server	Linux server
Operating system	Windows 10 Windows 11 Windows Server 2016 Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2022 Note All supported Windows operating systems require .NET Framework 4.5 and must support the x86-64 architecture.	Amazon Linux 2 CentOS 7.6 or later CentOS Stream 8 CentOS Stream 9 RHEL 7.6 or later RHEL 8.x RHEL 9.x SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 with SP5 or later SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 with SP5 Rocky Linux 8.5 or later Rocky Linux 9 Ubuntu 20.04 Ubuntu 22.04
Supported architecture	64-bit x86	64-bit x86 64-bit ARM (supported with Amazon EC2 instances running Amazon Linux 2, RHEL 7.x/8.x/9.x, CentOS 7/8/9, Rocky Linux 8/9, and Ubuntu 22.04 only)
GPU	(Optional) An NVIDIA or AMD GPU is required for hardware-based video encoding. If your server does not have a GPU, software-based video encoding is used. Note NVIDIA GPUs require NVENC for hardware-based video encoding. An NVIDIA GPU with compute capabilities >= `3.5` is required. AMD GPUs require Advanced Media Framework (AMF) for Linux or Windows, or Rapidfire for Windows only, for hardware-based video encoding. For Linux, the AMF encoder can be used on Ubuntu instances by installing the additional package `amf-amdgpu-pro` provided by the AMD driver.
GPU		An NVIDIA GPU is required for GPU sharing across virtual sessions. Note Only console sessions are supported on Linux servers with AMD GPUs.
Network	By default, the NICE DCV server communicates over port 8443. The port is configurable but must be greater than 1024. Ensure that the server allows communication over the required port.

Note

NICE DCV does not support operating systems that have reached end of life. Contact your vendor regarding your operating system.

For more information about the NICE DCV Client requirements, see NICE DCV Client requirements in the NICE DCV User Guide.

Supported Features

The following table compares the features that are supported by the Windows and Linux NICE DCV servers.

Feature	Windows NICE DCV server	Linux NICE DCV server
Console sessions	✓	✓
Virtual sessions	✗	✓
QUIC (UDP) transport protocol	✓	✓
Configurable TCP/UDP ports and addresses	✓	✓
Custom TLS certificates	✓	✓
Idle client disconnection	✓	✓
GPU sharing	✗	✓
USB remotization	✓	✓
Smart card support	✓	✓
Webcam support	✓ (Windows 10 and Server 2016 and later)	✗
Session storage and file transfer	✓	✓
Copying and pasting	✓	✓
Custom HTTP headers	✓	✓
Printing from sessions	✓	✓
Stereo 2.0 audio playback	✓	✓
Surround sound audio playback	✓ (up to 7.1)	✓ (up to 5.1)
Stereo 2.0 audio recording	✓	✓
Touchscreen support	✓ (Windows 10 and Server 2012 and later)	✓
Stylus support	✓ (Windows 10 and Server 2019)	✓
Gamepad support	✓ (Windows 10 and Server 2016 and later)	✗
Full screen selected monitors	✓	✗
Time zone redirection	✓	✓
WebAuthn redirection	✓	✗

For more information about the NICE DCV Client features, see NICE DCV Client features in the NICE DCV User Guide.

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What Is NICE DCV?

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