This document describes the steps required to deploy iTwin Capture Modeler Desktop and/or Center on Amazon Web Services. It assumes that the reader is familiar with AWS concepts or that at least he is able to browse through the very complete and up-to-date Amazon documentation.
1) Create EC2 instances
First of all, you should start by creating n EC2 instances. Let's assume that we deploy 2 instances for the sake of this example.
It is highly recommended to select the following ami, with the latest Windows Server:
Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Base - ami-fc97a7eb
The kind of instance you should select is g5.2xlarge. If this is not available then a similar g4 instance can be used.
Network
When filling the EC2 instance creation form, you should create a new VPC:
Within this VPC, create a new subnet:
To be able to use RDP: Create Route Table
Storage
On at least one of the machine, you should add an additional EBS storage (whose size will depend on your project size, as it will contain input and project data). Say 30GB for this example.
You should also create an internet gateway and attach it to the VPC route table so that you can connect to those instances (http://serverfault.com/questions/496736/cant-connect-to-ec2-instance-in-vpcamazon-aws).
The instances should be created in a security group allowing Remote Desktop from your endpoint and opening all traffic within this security group.
Once you have finished the form, you should be aware that instances with GPU are quite long to start (around 10 minutes).
2) Install iTwin Capture Modeler and Nvidia Drivers
Once the machine(s) has started, you can connect to them using RDP for all basic setup tasks but if you need to run iTwin Capture Modeler or activate the graphics drivers then we recommend you to use TeamViewer instead.
Please be aware that default IE settings are extremely restrictive. Depending on your project criticity, you may want to keep those settings. For the sake of this example, we simply turned them off, following the documentation you can open when the first pop up will be displayed.
You can get iTwin Capture Modeler from Bentley Bentley Fulfillment Center and install it as on any other machine.
For G5 instances:
Note that at the time of writing G5g instances have not been tested with iTwin Capture Modeler.
Prefer to use TeamViewer to get access to the desktop environment. If you can't connect with default user ID of TeamViewer, use the TeamViewer Server ID on client side you can find in TeamViewer > Help > About menu.
Once you are connected to the instance, go to
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/install-nvidia-driver.html and follow the instructions to install the GRID driver for the Nvidia GPU.
To activate the GRID features on G3 instances, you must define the product type for the driver in the registry and disable the licensing page in the control panel to prevent users from accidentally changing the product type.
To activate GRID features on G5 Windows instances
1.Run regedit.exe to open the registry editor.
2.Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\GridLicensing.
a. If you don't find <GridLicensing> folder, please create the Key.
3.Right-click on the right pane and choose New, DWORD.
4.For Name, enter FeatureType and then type Enter.
5.Right-click on FeatureType and choose Modify.
6.For Value data, type 2 and then choose OK.
7.Right-click on the right pane and choose New, DWORD.
8.For Name, enter NvCplDisableManageLicensePage and then type Enter.
9.Right-click on NvCplDisableManageLicensePage and choose Modify.
10.For Value data, type 1 and then choose OK.
11.Close the registry editor.
Once the registry keys have been created REINSTALL the NVIDIA drivers (Choose custom > Clean install again). GPU should be enabled.
3) Configure the shared drive (Center only)
One of the machine will host the shared drive that is going to be used for the Job Queue and project storage. You should use the Server Manager to bring the EBS online and mount it as disk D.
Then, using file explorer, share this D disk with full access to everyone. Get the private IP of this machine, say 172.30.0.114.
Then, on all other machines (even the one with the master), map a network drive on Z using the path \\172.30.0.114\D. It is also possible to map on a D drive to avoid doing an extra mapping on the machine running the master, but it could create some confusion.
You should setup the queue on all machines to use a folder of the mapped D drive, say a "jobs" folder with iTwinCaptureModelerSettings executable (can be found in \Program Files\Bentley\iTwin Capture Modeler\bin)
4) Use iTwin Capture Modeler
In order to use iTwin Capture Modeler, you unfortunately cannot use RDP as the graphics card will not be recognized. TeamViewer is a solution, VNC is another. You can create a local service to start the Engine if you are using the Center edition, but at least for the master executable part you will need to use another tool than RDP.
Once you are connected, you should now be able to use iTwin Capture Modeler as on a standard machine, and use the Z drive to put all the input data and projects.