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Peek Inside Your Game Stream Without SSH Keys! GameLift Streams' Clever New Trick

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure#devops

Hi everyone, it's Shii-chan! Today I found a feature that makes troubleshooting game streams a lot easier!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

According to AWS What's New, Amazon GameLift Streams has a new feature called Stream Session Admin Shell — a secure terminal connection to the live runtime environment of a stream session.

With it, you can inspect logs, query running processes, check GPU utilization, and examine application state, all in real time.

The story so far

When something looked off in a streaming application, peeking inside the runtime environment on the spot probably wasn't easy. You'd need to set up SSH keys, open ports, and manage infrastructure credentials, all of which come with security overhead to think about.

What changes

With Stream Session Admin Shell, you get a terminal connection with the same level of access as your GameLift Streams applications, without managing SSH keys, opening ports, or handling infrastructure credentials.

Connecting is simple: call the new CreateStreamSessionAdminShell API with your stream group and stream session identifiers, then hand the returned credentials to the SSM Session Manager plugin for the AWS CLI.

aws gamelift-streams create-stream-session-admin-shell --stream-group-id {stream-group-id} --stream-session-id {stream-session-id}

The terminal connection is scoped to that application environment and closes automatically when the stream session ends, so there's no risk of it lingering open.

Dive Deep

Supported runtimes are Linux (Ubuntu 22.04), Proton, and Windows Server 2022. It's available at no additional cost, in every AWS Region where Amazon GameLift Streams is offered.

Check the Stream Session Admin Shell developer guide and the CreateStreamSessionAdminShell API reference for the detailed steps before you use it.

Wrap-up

  • Amazon GameLift Streams adds Stream Session Admin Shell
  • Get a terminal into a stream session's live environment without SSH keys, open ports, or infrastructure credentials
  • Connect via the CreateStreamSessionAdminShell API and the SSM Session Manager plugin; it closes automatically when the session ends
  • Supported runtimes: Linux (Ubuntu 22.04), Proton, and Windows Server 2022
  • No additional cost, available in every Region where GameLift Streams is offered

A great fit if you run game streaming workloads and want an easier way to debug production runtime environments!

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