Cloud Gaming Made Easy

About

Effortlessly stream the latest games on Azure. This project automates the set-up process for cloud gaming on a Nvidia M60 GPU on Azure. The development of this project is heavily inspired by this excellent guide.

The automated setup first deploys an Azure NV6 virtual machine (VM) with a single Nvidia M60 GPU (1/2 of a M60 graphics card) and configures the Custom Script Extension to run the setup script. The setup script configures everything that's needed to run steam games on the VM, such as installing the Nvidia driver, connecting to ZeroTier VPN, and setting up auto login for Windows.

Disclaimer

This software comes with no warranty of any kind. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! This a personal project and is NOT endorsed by Microsoft. If you encounter an issue, please submit it on GitHub.

How Do I Stream Games?

Your Azure VM and your local machine are connected through ZeroTier VPN. You can stream games through this connection using Steam In-Home streaming or a third-party streaming software.

How Much Bandwidth Does It Take?

The bandwidth needed can vary drastically depending on your streaming host/client, game, and resolution. I recommend most people to limit their bandwidth to either 15 or 30 Mbits/sec. If you are streaming at higher than 1080P or just want to have the best possible experience, go with 50 Mbits/sec.

Pricing

To game on the cloud on Azure, you will have to pay for the virtual machine, outgoing data bandwidth from the VM, and managed disk (See Q & A for managed disk).

You can pick between 2 kinds of VM: standard and low priority. A low priority VM is around 60% cheaper than a standard VM. The downside is that a low priority VM can be shutdown or removed at any time. See Q & A for how to add back a low priority VM once it's removed.

The calculators below are prepopulated with an estimated monthly price for playing 35 hours a month in West US 2 region. It assumes that you stream at an averge of around 30 Mbits/second (13.5 GBs an hour) and use one 128GB managed disk. You can divide the total by 35 to find the estimated cost per hour.

Azure also charges you for the number of transactions on managed disk. The calculator assumes 100k transactions a month (no idea how accurate this is).

• Price Calculator for Standard
• Price Calculator for Low Priority

Type	Bandwidth (Mbits/sec)	Monthly Data (GBs)	Monthly Price*	Hourly Price*
Standard	30	473	$95.11	$2.72
Standard	15	236	$74.49	$2.13
Low Priority	30	473	$68.16	$1.95
Low Priority	15	236	$47.54	$1.36

*As of 05/06/2018

Usage

I. Setup your local machine

1. Sign up for a Paid Azure subscription. You need a paid subscription as the free account does not grant you access to GPU VMs.
2. Sign up for an account on zero tier VPN and create a network. Make sure the network is set to public. Note down the network id.
3. Download and install zero tier VPN on your local machine. Join the network using the network ID noted in the previous step. Make sure your local machine connect to the network BEFORE the VM does!

II. Automatically Deploy Your Azure VM

Automated Standard

Automated Low Priority

Click on the button above for your desired VM type and fill out the form. You'll need to fill in:

• Subscription: your paid subscription
• Resource group: create a new one and name it anything you like
• Location: pick the location closest to you. Note that not every location has the VM with M60 graphics card. Check this website for whether a region supports NV6 VM.
• Admin username and password: the login credentials for the local user.
• Script location: the location of the setup script. Use the default value.
• Windows Update: whether to update windows, which takes around an hour. Recommended to leave as false.
• Network ID: network ID of your zero tier VPN.

For standard VM, you could specify a time when the VM would automatically shut down and deallocate. Once it's deallocated, you do not have to pay for the VM. See Q & A for more.

Note: your admin credentials will be stored in plain-text in the VM. See Q & A for more.

After filling these in, check on I agree the terms and click on purchase. A VM with a M60 GPU will be automatically deployed and configured for you. Note that the setup process will take around 15 minutes (1 hour + if you choose to update Windows).

You can monitor the progress of the deployment using the notification button (bell icon) on the top right. You can also check the status under Virtual Machine -> CloudGaming -> Extensions -> the only entry in the list. If you see an error or failure, submit an issue on GitHub along with what's in detailed status.

After the deployment is successful, you'll need to wait for the second stage setup to finish. Please wait for at least 10 minutes before logging into your VM.

III. Log into your VM

You can log into your VM using Remote Desktop Connection. Note that it's a bit more involved if you choose to use a low priority VM.

• Standard VM

  1. Go to Virtual machines in Azure Portal and click on CloudGaming
  2. Click on Connect and then Download RDP File (leave everything as default)
  3. Open your RDP file. Click on "Don't ask me again" and Connect for RDP popup.
  4. Enter the username and password you provided. Click on more choices -> "Use a different account" if you can't modify the username.
  5. Click on "Don't ask me again" and "Yes" for certificate verification popup.

• Low Priority VM

  1. Navigate to https://resources.azure.com/
  2. Click on the "+" next to subscriptions on the left and make sure the subscriptionId matches with your desired subscription. You look up your subscriptions by searching "Subscriptions" on the Azure portal.
  3. In the left panel, go to Name_of_your_subscription -> resourceGroups -> Name_of_your_resource_group -> providers -> Microsoft.Compute -> virtualMachineScaleSets -> CloudGaming -> publicipaddresses
  4. Note down the ipAddress.
  5. Launch Remote Desktop Connection on your local machine and follow the last step for Standard VM.

IV. Setup Steam

Steam is automatically installed on your VM. Launch it and log-in with your steam credentials. Once logged in, install your games through Steam on the VM. Unfortunately, Steam no longer allows interaction-free installation from local machine, requring you to do a bit of setup in the VM.

You could either install a game to your system drive (managed disk) or a temporary drive. The temporary drive has faster speeds, but you lose all your data after deallocating a VM. You will have to re-install your games every time you stop and start your VM if you choose to install on the temporary drive. See Q & A for more.

Make sure to limit the bandwidth of your local steam client to 15 or 30 Mbits (50 if you don't mind the extra data cost). You can do so through settings -> In-Home Streaming -> Advanced client options.

V. Game!

Close the remote desktop connection using the shortcut C:\disconnect.lnk and enjoy some cloud gaming!

In Steam in-home streaming, you can toggle streaming stats display with F6.

I Want to Manually Deploy My VM

You could manually deploy your VM through Azure portal, PowerShell, or Azure CLI. Note that a low priority VM has to exist in a virtual machine scale set, making it a bit more difficult to do manually.

1. Deploy a NV6 size VM through the azure portal(see this guide for instructions). For low priority VM, checkout this documentation and this reddit thread.
2. Remote desktop into your Azure VM instance.
3. Launch PowerShell (click on the Windows key in the bottom-left corner, type "powershell", and click on the app PowerShell).
4. Download https://github.com/ecalder6/azure-gaming/blob/master/setup.ps1. You could download this onto your local machine and paste it through remote desktop.
5. Navigate to the directory containing setup.ps1 in PowerShell and execute

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -File setup.ps1 -network {zero_tier_network_id} -admin_username {username_set_in_portal} -admin_password {password_set_in_portal} -manual_install

If you want to update windows, append

-windows_update

5. After some time, the script will restart your VM, at which point your remote desktop session will end.
6. Wait for approximately 15 minutes (1+ hour if you want to update Windows) and then remote desktop into your VM again.
7. Follow Setup Steam from above.

Stopping a VM

After you are done with a gaming session, I recommend you stop (deallocate) the VM using the Azure portal. When it's stopped (deallocated), you don't have to pay for the VM. Below are the steps for stopping a VM in portal:

1. Login to Azure portal
2. On the left-hand side, click on All resources
3. Click on the VM you've created (for automated, the VM name is CloudGaming). For low priority VM, click on the CloudGaming virtual machine scale set.
4. Click on Stop on the top (deallocate for low priority).

To start the VM, follow the steps above except that you click on start.

Removing a VM

If you no longer wish to game on Azure, you could remove everything by:

1. Login to Azure portal
2. On the left-hand side, click on Resource Groups.
3. Click on the resource group you've created.
4. Click on delete resource group on the top.

Updating Nvidia Driver

Go to Install NVIDIA GPU drivers on N-series VMs running Windows to install the latest driver. Select Nvidia GRID driver for Windows Server 2016 for the NV series VM.

Contribution

Contributions are welcome! Please submit an issue and a PR for your change.

Future work items

• Propagate script execution status after restart to deployment status on the portal.
• Explore the feasibility of image and snapshot
• Encrypt credentials for auto-login (achieved in Autologon)

Q & A

• What's the difference between a managed disk and a temporary drive?

  A managed disk is a persisted virtual disk drive that costs a few dollars a month. A temporary drive (called temporary storage in the VM) is an actual disk drive that sits on the computer that hosts your VM. Temporary drive is free of charge and is much faster than a managed disk. However, data on temporary drive are not persisted and will be wiped when the VM is deallocated.

  There are 2 types of managed disk, standard and premium. Our VM type only supoorts standard disk, which has speeds similar to a typical hard drive.

• What if the game is too big for C:? I don't want to reinstall it every time I restart the VM.

  You can create a new managed disk and attach it to your VM. See this documentation for more.

• How secure are my credentials?

  Your admin username and password you provide in the Azure portal form will be stored as plain text in 3 instances:

  1. While the script is executing, they will be stored as plain-text in memory.
  2. To facilitate auto-login for the VM, the credentials will be stored as plain-text in registry.
  3. NSSM will log these credentials in Windows logs.

  You are safe if no malicious third-party can access the memory or disk on your VM. Now since the only way to remote desktop into your VM is through the admin account, the credentials should be safe. Still, you should NOT reuse the admin username and password anywhere else.

• Do I have to pay for my VM once it's shutdown?

  It's depends on how you shut down your VM. You don't pay for the VM ONLY when it's deallocated. Stopping the VM through the portal or the auto-shutdown setting for standard VM should also deallocate the VM. Still, it’s always a good idea to double check your VM status.

• The deployment seems successful, but steam isn't installed?

  • Run

    nssm status SetupSecondStage

    in cmd to check the status of the setup. If it says SERVICE_RUNNING, wait for a few minutes. Once it says the service no longer exists, restart the VM.
  • To restart the VM. Follow the same steps as stopping your VM except you click on restart. You could also restart from the start menu in the VM.

• Steam on my local machine does not have the option to stream from VM?

  • Make sure steam is installed and running on the VM.
  • On ZeroTier Central, make sure that both your machine and the VM are connected under the members tab.

• Can't stream games because the screen is locked on the VM?

  Use the C:\disconnect.lnk in the VM to close the remote desktop connection.

• Double clicking on C:\disconnect.lnk does nothing?

  Right-click on C:\disconnect.lnk and click Properties. In Target, change the "1" to "2":

  C:\Windows\System32\tscon.exe 2 /dest:console

• Should I install the audio driver update for Steam?

  By default, steam won't stream any game before you install its audio driver on the VM. You should just install it to get rid of the popup. Alternatively, you could launch steam with "-skipstreamingdrivers".

• My Low Priority VM was removed from my Virtual machine scale set. How do I get it back?

  To add back a low priority VM, first go to your Virtual machine scale set in Azure portal. Click on Scaling on the left and in the Override condition, change the instance count to 1. Click on Save on the top.

• My question is not listed

  Submit an issue on GitHub.