Table of contents
1.
Introduction 📝
2.
Concept and terminology for Amazon Nimble Studio 🌼
2.1.
Amazon EC2 instance
2.2.
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
2.3.
AWS Managed Microsoft AD
2.4.
AWS managed policies
2.5.
AWS Management Console
2.6.
AWS IAM Identity Center
2.7.
AWS Systems Manager Session Manager
2.8.
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud 
2.9.
Launch profile
2.10.
Regions
2.11.
Streaming image
3.
Availability Zones for Amazon Nimble Studio 🌐
4.
Setting up to use Nimble Studio 🟩
4.1.
1. Set up IAM
4.2.
2. Check service quotas
4.3.
3. Request a quota increase
5.
Data protection in Amazon Nimble Studio 🔐
6.
Frequently Asked Questions
6.1.
What is Amazon Nimble Studio?
6.2.
Why should I use Amazon Nimble Studio? 
6.3.
How do I get my data/assets in or out of Nimble Studio?
6.4.
What does the customer experience look like in Amazon Nimble Studio? 
6.5.
How does Nimble Studio relate to other AWS services?
7.
Conclusion
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Amazon Nimble Studio

Author Alok Pandey
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Introduction 📝

Amazon Nimble Studio is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) service that creates the infrastructure required to run a cloud-based studio for generating visual effects (VFX), animation, and interactive content. Nimble Studio offers virtual workstations, cloud rendering, and shared storage to content makers, allowing them to scale resources to meet rising content demand swiftly.

Amazon Nimble Studio

Production studios may use Nimble Studio to safely utilize a global workforce in the cloud, lowering the expenses of additional physical infrastructure and technical labor. By using cutting-edge AWS security, your admins can keep your important studio resources safe while enabling your employees to access the tools they require, such as scalable high-speed storage, licensing, and near-limitless rendering. Now let's understand some concepts and terminology for Amazon Nimble Studio. 

Concept and terminology for Amazon Nimble Studio 🌼

You can use the core ideas and terminology in this guide to help you grasp Amazon Nimble Studio and get started with it.

Amazon EC2 instance

A cloud instance is a virtual server. The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that you selected when you launched the instance is replicated in its configuration. You must first launch an instance before you can join a streaming session with your virtual workstation. From the Nimble Studio portal, you can accomplish this.

Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

The data needed to launch an instance is provided via an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). You must run StudioBuilder and deploy your cloud studio before you can use the AMI to start an Amazon EC2 instance. All of the packages required for the deployment are present in an AMI.

AWS Managed Microsoft AD

The AWS Cloud's fully managed Active Directory is called AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD).

The AWS Managed Microsoft AD service is used by StudioBuilder to construct an Active Directory environment while building your cloud studio. Once it has been installed, you can link your new AWS Managed Microsoft AD to the AWS IAM Identity Center, which replaced AWS Single Sign-On (IAM Identity Center).

AWS managed policies

A standalone policy that is developed and managed by AWS is known as an AWS-managed policy. An independent policy is one that has its own Amazon Resource Name (ARN), which contains the name of the policy. One AWS managed policy is arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/IAMReadOnlyAccess.

AWS Management Console

A wide range of service consoles for managing AWS services is accessible through the AWS Management Console, a web application.

Each service also comes with a console of its own. These consoles provide a large selection of cloud computing tools. For instance, you can create a license server and update or add new software to your Linux worker Amazon Machine Image within the EC2 panel (AMI). Even a service that assists with billing and cost control is available.

Concept and terminology for Amazon Nimble Studio

AWS IAM Identity Center

An AWS tool called IAM Identity Center makes it simple to manage access to many AWS accounts and business apps from a single location. You may give users single sign-on access to all of their assigned accounts and applications using the IAM Identity Center. In AWS Organizations, you can also manage user permissions and multi-account access from a single location for all of your accounts.

AWS Systems Manager Session Manager

Session Manager is a fully managed AWS Systems Manager tool that enables you to manage your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and virtual machines (VMs) through an interactive one-click browser-based shell or through the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI).

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud 

You can launch AWS resources into a defined virtual network using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). This virtual network has the advantages of using the scalable infrastructure of AWS while closely resembling a conventional network that you would operate in your own data center. During deployment, Amazon Nimble Studio gives you access to a default VPC.

Launch profile

Access to studio elements like computing farms, shared file systems, managed file systems, licensing server settings, instance kinds, and Amazon Machine Images is controlled by a launch profile (AMIs).

Launch profiles are created by studio managers in the Nimble Studio console. From the Nimble Studio site, artists can launch an instance by using their launch profiles. How a user can start a streaming session is determined by their launch profile. Studio administrators can utilize any launch profile by default.

Regions

You can choose your home AWS Region from a selection of six offered by Nimble Studio. Users near their home Region will benefit from quicker speeds and better functionality. See Amazon Nimble Studio Availability Zones for more details.

Streaming image

A resource within Nimble Studio called a "streaming image" stands in for an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) and is designed specifically to function with virtual workstations. Users can connect to their workstations using a NICE DCV client and a streaming image.

Availability Zones for Amazon Nimble Studio 🌐

Different areas known as Availability Zones are designed to be segregated from failures in other Availability Zones.

To coordinate Availability Zones across accounts, you must utilize the Availability Zone ID, a distinct and dependable identifier for an Availability Zone.

Amazon Nimble Studio is accessible in a subset of each supported Region's Availability Zones. The IDs that can be used for each Region are listed in the table below. See AZ IDs for Your Resources in the AWS RAM User Guide to see the mapping of IDs to Availability Zones in your account.

Region name

Region code

Region ID

US East (N. Virginia)

us-east-1

use1-az2, use1-az4, use1-az6

US West (Oregon)

us-west-2

usw2-az1, usw2-az2, usw2-az3, usw2-lax1-az1

Asia Pacific (Sydney)

ap-southeast-2

apse2-az1, apse2-az3, apse2-az2

Asia Pacific (Tokyo)

ap-northeast-1

apne1-az1, apne1-az2, apne1-az4

Canada (Central)

ca-central-1

cac1-az1, cac1-az2

Europe (London)

eu-west-2

euw2-az1, euw2-az2, euw2-az3

Setting up to use Nimble Studio 🟩

Amazon Nimble Studio setup involves the following steps:

  1. Set up IAM
  2. Check service quotas
  3. Request a quota increase

1. Set up IAM

Take a look at the following AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) documentation:

To finish the configuration, sign in as an admin user to your AWS account.

2. Check service quotas

The majority of AWS quotas can be viewed and requested increases using the AWS Service Quotas console. It's crucial to make sure you aren't already at your limit if, for instance, you are using an existing AWS account for deployment.

Choose the AWS Region where the quota increase is needed as most service quotas are region-specific.

3. Request a quota increase

The number of Nimble Studio virtual workstations, render workers, and EC2 G4 instances you can launch may be limited by limitations for your AWS account.

You can ask to have all of your studio quotas raised. The resources your team requires to complete their task will be available to your studio once your request for a service quota increase has been accepted. See AWS service quotas for further details.

Data protection in Amazon Nimble Studio 🔐

Amazon Nimble Studio uses the AWS shared responsibility paradigm for data protection. According to this model, AWS is responsible for protecting the global infrastructure that powers the entire AWS Cloud. You are responsible for controlling your content hosted on this infrastructure. This section contains security configuration and management activities for your AWS services.

We recommend that you use AWS Identity and Access Management to secure AWS account credentials and create individual user accounts for data security purposes (IAM). As a result, each user is only granted the rights required to carry out their job obligations.

We strongly advise against entering confidential or sensitive information, such as email addresses, into tags or free-form fields like the Name box. This includes using the interface, API, AWS CLI, or AWS SDKs to interact with Nimble Studio or other AWS services. Any information entered into tags, or free-form name fields may be used for billing or diagnostic logs. If you offer a URL to an external server, we highly advise against including credentials in the URL to confirm your request to that site.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Amazon Nimble Studio?

Amazon Nimble Studio is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) service that creates the infrastructure required to run a cloud-based studio for generating visual effects (VFX), animation, and interactive content. 

Why should I use Amazon Nimble Studio? 

Nimble Studio is a managed solution built on the AWS architecture that guarantees effective computing power, data security, and a host of other advantages.

How do I get my data/assets in or out of Nimble Studio?

You can import or export data to and from Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) using tools like AWS Data Sync or AWS Snowball devices, and then utilize FSx in Nimble Studio to retrieve that data.

What does the customer experience look like in Amazon Nimble Studio? 

Popular digital content creation (DCC) and rendering programs like Autodesk Maya, Arnold, Foundry Nuke, and Redshift, as well as free and open-source tools like Blender and Krita, are available to customers for the creation of content.

How does Nimble Studio relate to other AWS services?

AWS is the foundation of Nimble Studio, which offers the dependability and performance of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for compute, AWS FSx for storage, AWS IAM Identity Center (the replacement for AWS SSO), AWS Managed Directory Service for user management, and AWS Thinkbox Deadline for render farm management.

Conclusion

In this article, we have extensively discussed Amazon Nimble Studio. We also discussed how to set up Amazon Nimble Studio and important concepts and terminology related to Amazon Nimble Studio. If you would like to learn more, check out our articles on

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