Using Azure Servers To Play PC Games In The Cloud

Basically it will come down to this: we’re going to launch an Azure GPU instance, configure it for ultra-low latency streaming, and actually properly play Battlefield 1, a first-person shooter!

I must mention that this post is inspired by Larry Gadea’s guide, which uses a slightly different method for streaming games from the cloud, make sure to check it out! (I am also stealing parts of the guide, sorry about it Larry!)

*This is a guest post from a Parsec user who set up an Azure server for gaming and wanted to share his steps for doing so. Parsec does not guarantee that this is the best way to set up an Azure server, and the instructions may not be applicable if Azure updates its offering or interfaces.

Costs

• NV6 Server: €1.26/hr
• Bandwidth at 10MBit/s: €0.38/hr
• HD storage: €0.003/hr

Total at 10MBit/s: €1.65/hr
Total at 30Mbit/s: €2.41/hr (recommended)

NVIDIA Tesla M-Series

Example use cases:
Graphics rendering, video editing, remote visualization, high performance computing and analytics.

Very bad examples, since the best use case is to play AAA games at 60 FPS with the highest settings possible on a cloud server.

Part 1: Creating the Azure instance

Go to the Azure portal and use the following instructions to create an NV6 type machine that has the NVIDIA M60 GPU.

1. Enter the Azure Portal
2. On the left side select ‘Virtual machines’ and click ‘Add’
3. Select ‘Windows’ then ‘Windows 10 Enterprise N’
4. When prompted for the deployment model, select ‘Resource Manager’ from the dropdown and click the ‘Create’ button
5. Enter a name and some credentials for the machine. Make sure though that the ‘VM disk type’ is ‘HDD’.
6. When prompted to pick the size (type) of machine select ‘View all’ up top and click on the ‘NV6’ machine type. Try not to panic about the cost, we’ll only be using it for a few hours while gaming, not 24/7.
7. On the Settings screen, most defaults are fine, but do change the Network Security Group to ‘None’ and turn off Diagnostics
8. Confirm everything on the Summary screen and the instance will launch. Note that it takes a few minutes until your machine is Running and it’ll have an IP address.

Part 2: Connecting to the VM, basic set-up

Connect to your server via Microsoft Remote Desktop. Simply paste your server’s IP adress and hit “Connect”. You will need to enter your credentials that you set up before.

Once connected, you’ll need to create a new user account that isn’t the account you specified earlier. This is necessary for some driver changes and auto-login steps you’ll be doing later.

1. Search for ‘User Accounts’, then ‘Manage another account’
2. Then click to ‘Add new user in PC settings’ and create a new user. This will be the accout you’ll use going forward.
3. Once created, click on it on the list
4. Click on ‘Change the account type’, select ‘Administrator’, and confirm

5. Disable Windows Defender

• Click the Start button and type in ‘Windows Defender’
• Click Settings and turn off ‘Real-time protection’

6. Turn on auto-login into Windows. This is useful to make it faster to start playing games after rebooting.

• Press the Start button and type in ‘netplwiz’
• Click on your username
• Uncheck ‘Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer’
• Then click the OK button and enter your user’s password

7. Disconnect from the session. Set up this new user on Microsoft Remote Desktop on the client side and re-login with the new account. You won’t need the old account anymore, so feel free to remove settings about it from Remote Desktop.

Important note: There’s a Windows Update that breaks networking for NV instances in Azure on Windows 10. Microsoft says a fix is coming by the end of February, in the meantime to avoid installing KB3213986.
Do not let Windows Update to install any updates or you will not be able to connect to your VM after reboot.

Part 3: NVIDIA M60 video card

1. You’ll notice that if you pull up the Device Manager that the driver will be missing for the M60 video card.
2. Get the latest NVIDIA Tesla M60 drivers from here. Sometimes there are other versions of the drivers mentioned on Azure forum, so go there if you have incompatibility problems.
3. Do the regular Express install and reboot when completed.
4. Disable the default display adapter in Windows or else games will choose the wrong one.

Part 4: Audio

There is no soundcard on the VM. Virtual Audio Cable handles this quite well.

• Download the trial version from here.
• Extract the zip and run the ‘setup64.exe’ installer as Administrator.

Part5: Parsec & TightVNC

Because Parsec needs an unlocked screen to work, we can not use Microsoft Remote Desktop to set up Parsec server, we are using TightVNC instead. (We still need to install TightVNC with Remote Desktop.)

TightVNC

1. Download it from here.
2. Choose the “Typical” setup type.
3. Set a password to protect the connection.
4. After you hit finish, your server should be up and running.

Repeat this process on your client computer. Disconnect from Remote Desktop and recconect with TightVNC Viewer. (You might want to change the resolution for something that suits you, also you can turn off one of the screens.)

Parsec

Our technology delivers an ultra-smooth, low latency streaming experience — Any game, any time, no frills.

Parsec | Cloud and Remote PC Gaming

1. Download it from here for both of your machines and install them.
2. Start your Parsec server and log in with your credentials.
3. Close the VNC connection, by simply closing the application.
4. Head over to your Profile and connect to your server.

Voila, you should be connected to your server, ready for gaming. Make sure to run your games in fullscreen windowed mode.

Don’t forget to Stop the Azure instance when you’re done playing. It’ll be very expensive if you don’t. You can stop the VM without losing your config.

Deallocated machine

Even though my internet connection is not the best (Download: 2Mb/s, Upload: 100kb/s) at my apartment, I can still play with Battlefield 1 as it would run on my own PC:

Some facts

• The West Europe Azure server is very close to Blizzard’s server. (2-3ms)
• If you run a game as an administrator, it will not recognise your keyboard and mouse.
• PS4 controllers are not working.
• Do not let Windows Update to install any updates or you will not be able to connect to your VM after reboot.

If you have troubles, please check out the CloudyGamer subreddit — hopefully we can simplify this process and make things easier and faster!