February 26, 2022

Guide to cloud gaming on Azure

This article is heavily inspired from Medium - A killer guide for Cloud Gaming on Azure (March 2020). I've decided to rewrite my own article to clarify some details and to add some information.

In this article we'll see how to setup a gaming cloud grade Windows 10 Pro on Azure in order to remotely play games such as Fallout 4.

Requirementss

A local Windows 10 desktop
An Azure account
A Parsec account

Create Azure VM

I'll assume you already have an Azure account and go straight to the VM creation

Go to Create a virtual machine

Required fields:

Give it a name, example: GamingCloud
Choose a Windows 10 Pro Gen 1 image, and not a windows server image. Check your VM size for compatibility Gen 1 or 2.
Choose a NV-series or NVv3-series VM size for its Nvidia Tesla GPU, example: Standard_NV6.
Fill the Administrator account's username and password fields. This will be the account used by the windows 10 pro image itself, to not confuse with your Azure account
Inbound port rules
- Public inbound ports: Allow selected ports
- Select inbound ports: RDP (3389)
Disk options: Standard HDD

Optional fields:

Create and attach a new disk, Standard HDD, Delete with VM, with the desired size to install your games. The temporary disk may not be big enough for them. Here the Standard_NV6's disk size is 380GB.
Enable Auto-shutdown, this instance comes at a high price, $1.595/hour in West Europe. An auto-shutdown early in the morning can save you a lot of money if you forget to shut it down even once.

Finaly

Create!

The rest of the fields are left to their default value. But feel free to tweak some of them for your own needs.

Connect to your remote Windows 10 Pro

Once your VM is deployed, we'll connect to it with Microsoft Remote Desktop. Other solutions exists, but this is my personal favorite, easy and native to Windows 10.

Download Microsoft Remote Desktop from the microsoft store
Use your VM's public IP address as the PC name of the connection
Add the Administrator account as the User account
Connect!

Setup Windows 10's GPU and Parsec

In order to use the GPU we have to manually setup its driver on our remote Windows 10 Pro. We will then use Parsec as our remote cloud gaming tool.

Check for updates and install latest updates.
Download latest graphic drivers NVIDIA TESLA M60
Download Parsec, install it and log in (You need a Parsec account)
Check in Startup Apps that Parsec is on
Restart remote Windows 10 pro

Get your GPU bus ID by running in PowerShell

# Default file path
cd 'C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI'
.\nvidia-smi

Run in PowerShell, to set the TESLA monitor by default

# Default file path
cd 'C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVSMI'
.\nvidia-smi -g {BUS_ID} -dm 0 # example: .\nvidia-smi -g 00000001:00:00.0 -dm 0

Add an audio device to enable audio. Install VBCABLE
Restart remote Windows 10 pro

Starting a Gaming session

Now that everything is installed we'll see the steps to start a gaming session on your new gaming cloud system.

Start your Azure Virtual Machine
Connect to your Windows 10 with Microsoft Remote Desktop to initiate a RDP session and start windows 10.
Close your Microsoft Remote Desktop, your RDP session.
Connect to it with Parsec
Play, install, do whatever you wish through Parsec!
Don't forget to shutdown when you're finished to save money when you're done.

We're all done, your gaming cloud system is ready to go. All there is left is for you to install your favorite games and play them! Thank you for reading this post, hoping it has been useful.

Resources

Here's a list of articles that helped me write my own:

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