Amazon workspaces - do adobe products work - yes or no answer please.

Report · Dec 17, 2019

Please could anyone confirm if the current set of Adobe Creative Cloud products, including the Creative Cloud installer, work on Amazon Workspaces ? At this point I am looking for a Yes/No answer so as not to waste further time if it is a negative.

The reason for this quesion is that Adobe Creative Cloud Installer does not re-commence after the web browser login step. I've been running the company's desktops locally using Adobe CC successfully for years and now we are migrating desktops to the cloud we seem to have a major issue.

I Googled for some time on this issue and found no clear or consistent answers, so am pposting here in hope of getting an understandable answer.

Out of interest, I believe Amazon Workspaces uses Win Server 2016 with the Windows desktop experience - maybe that has something to do with it ?

Thanks in advance and for taking the time to read.

Report · Dec 17, 2019

Minimum System requirements for Cloud Programs... scroll down and check each program
-http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/system-requirements.html

1 - Windows server is not a supported operating system

2 - What is supported is to install on an individual computer

Report · Dec 17, 2019

Thanks John for the prompt response and citing those docs. I think either Amazon or Adobe are missing a trick here and leaving customers with a serious cloud adoption issue. Moving desktops to the cloud is a valid business benefit. However, there are no real contenders for much of the software that Adobe provide. Cutsomers are therefore in a rock-and-hard-place situation here.

Could anyone else who sees this as an issue please 'like' my original question - we need to bring some kind of focus to this and get it fixed. Maybe Amazon and Adobe can agree some internal flag on the Amazon Workspaces OS that will allow the software to work?

Thanks in advance.

Report · Dec 17, 2019

JEE_12340, in addition to the system requirements listed by John, please see https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/technical-support-policy-virtualized-environments.html which discusses many of the limitations to using a virtualized environment to run desktop applications.

Overall our desktop applications continue to take advantage of the latest hardware that is available to enhance the creative output of your work. We have also implemented several server-based/cloud solutions within desktop applications. Some of the most recent advances in Photoshop and Premiere Pro use Adobe Sensei to offload the heavy work to a cloud-based solution. The applications themselves, though continue to be demanding and require direct access to the hardware that is installed on the computer. Server-based solutions typically attempt to emulate this hardware, with some measure of success.

You can use the feedback link that John has referenced, but overall I doubt you will see our desktop applications ever supporting virtual environments. It is more likely we will create new creative solutions that will work in these types of environments.

A similar process has been used with our mobile applications for iOS and Android. We have often taken the best features of our desktop products and then optimize them for a mobile perspective. One of the most recent examples of this strategy is Photoshop for iPad - https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/photoshop-ipad-faq.html.

Report · Jan 27, 2024

I have adobe Creative Suite CS4. Can I install this on AWS workspace?

Report · Jan 27, 2024

@billc45328689

maybe, if you use compatibility mode, but you can no longer activate cs4 on any os. so, the most you're going to achieve is 30 days trial usage.

Report · Dec 17, 2019

This is a public forum with "some" Adobe staff participation, use the links below to make a report or request
-for Video & Audio & Animator programs https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/
-https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Report · Dec 18, 2019

Thanks Jeff. This is the bit where I bleat on about why the mighty Adobe should change its policy. Painful to write but has to be done.

Adobe may need to revisit the revenue potential for virtualised desktop services as many of the technical weeknesses that you hint at are no longer the case. I fear there may be a religious position being adopted and its truly not that clear cut.

Regarding licencing I perfectly appreciate the need for licence (revenue) control, Having been working in corporate software for 30 years I get the edginess about single-user products moving onto a potential multi-user platform, but MS, Amazon and others have this under control. All Amazon Web Services Windows desktops run under controlled licence conditions - no one is sharing or pirating.

From a business risk perspective, virtual desktops are the perfect answer to control, audit, backup, security, and device & data loss protection. In a first-world internet speed situation, you could do the old coke/pepsi side-by-side test and most users would not taste the difference between the virtual and physical world. And when its time to add more power, we simply visit the console and voila the machine has more disk, memory or cpu. The virtual desktops are operated by recognisable organisations and available in a legal territory to suit your needs.

In summary, someone at Adobe should re-visit the virtual desktop world - there's money on the table there for the taking with minimal technical or reputational risk . There is the longer term consieration that some Adobe competitor might come along and build a niche on virtualise platforms so for market preservation someone at Adobe HQ really should mandate a review. Oh - and customers might be quite pleased too, especially the bigger ticket corporates. But I won't be holding my breath for an early solution.

Semon mode off. Thanks for listening.

Report · Dec 18, 2019

Thanks for the feedback, JEE_12340, if you do have a near term need for using powerful creative software in a virtualized environment, then I would recommend looking for a solution through another company.

Report · Mar 10, 2020

I'm trying to use aws virtual machine so that I can do testing. I have licenses that I can use to install which is fine, but it will not install a creative cloud on the machine. I authenticate through the browser but the app doesn't continue the installation process. I have an 8 vCPU 32GB ram.

Report · Mar 10, 2020

Hi Waynecto - I have nothing positive to report on my original quest for a way of running Adobe graphics products on AWS. The last response from an Adobe source was 'sorry but we aren't changing anytime soon'. I hope they get a grip on the situation sometime soon but its not available now. Good luck.

Report · Mar 10, 2020

So I’m clear you can’t get it to install either? Because I am able to get it to run on my VMware on Mac but that doesn’t solve my testing problem.

Report · Mar 17, 2020

JEE, thank you for posting that issue. I am the systems director for a chain of 5 newspapers. We have been usign Adobe for many years (20+). About 3 years ago, I dismantled 3 data centers, cancelled al MPLSs and moved servers to AWS and networked them to AWS Workspaces. The solution worked great. We reduced cost to a quarter or a fifth and achieved total freedom for telecomuting... globally. Now, since last year, we are running into problems with Cloud Manager and we are seeing more and more incompatible applications. I have posted in the forums and called Adobe with no anwser worth mentioning, and ditto with Amazon forums. You can find my post in Amazon forums searching for "Adobe Creative Cloud updates fail in AWS Workspaces".

I believe that part of the problem may be with the features it might require from newer builds of Windows. I see that windows server 2016 in the background of Workspaces is build 16xx. That build does not include universal windows platform (UWP), which I suspect Adobe may be increasingly using to create applications that work in different environments and form factors.

Current build of Windows for workstations is 1909. I do not remember exactly, but I think the problem goes away with build 17xx. There is probably something more, otherwise Amazon would have updated the server OS to a more current version.

Whatever the problem actually is, I find it narrow minded and shortsited not to pay attention to this issue. Adobe cannot expect that future production structures will be based in physical local instances, and Amazon should be aware that there are still large production ventures based on Adobe.

I suspect that, as I do, many other people cannot really afford to backtrack from virtual solutions, in the long run somebody else will fill Adbe's void as you said... Or some other cloud service will come up with a solution.

If you are using more than 200 aws wrkspaces, you can take your own server OS (and pay for your own Microsoft licenses)... but that is not within everybody's reach

Report · Mar 23, 2020

What I don't understand is that the products were installed and running on a version of WorkSpaces, same overall config, that I had up and running yesterday. Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator. Worked fine; up for about 6 months.

Yesteday I had a system crash, and for some reason the restore did not bring back most of my Apps. Today have spent a couple of hours trying every which way to Sunday to try and install any / all of them. No luck!

My chat session with Support ended up with a "have to send you to another department"... ...and then the darkness of Internet silence.

You would think that between two such giants with great product offerings, both of whom I have great respect for, that there would be an attempt to address this kind of issue.

Go figure.

Report · Mar 23, 2020

Please could anyone confirm if the current set of Adobe Creative Cloud products, including the Creative Cloud installer, work on Amazon Workspaces ? At this point I am looking for a Yes/No answer so as not to waste further time if it is a negative.

The reason for this quesion is that Adobe Creative Cloud Installer does not re-commence after the web browser login step. I've been running the company's desktops locally using Adobe CC successfully for years and now we are migrating desktops to the cloud we seem to have a major issue.

I Googled for some time on this issue and found no clear or consistent answers, so am pposting here in hope of getting an understandable answer.

Out of interest, I believe Amazon Workspaces uses Win Server 2016 with the Windows desktop experience - maybe that has something to do with it ?

Thanks in advance and for taking the time to read.

You can search out that post and see the replies from Adobe folks. I appreciate the effort you guys went to in giving your responses though if I am being honest I can't help but feel that its a bit cheesy to float out the old RTFM and 'not supported - see docs' answers to something so fundamental.

Aside from the insubstantial responses, I feel that closing the post for more responses is a less than optimal action.

Anyway, if you read the orignial thread, and sit and think about it, the unsaid question yearning for an answer is 'will Adobe creative cloud / desktop products ever be supported on AWS or other virtual desktop environments?' So what do you think ?

Report · Mar 23, 2020

My understanding is that Adobe products (with the exception of the mobile or web-based products) must be installed on an individual user's computer, either laptop or desktop. To me, this says they aren't supported on AWS. At all.

Edited to Add: Amazon's website lists only Experience Manager and Connect as available Adobe products that can be used with AWS. I'd take that as a pretty definitive NO as far as most of the Adobe products are concerned.

Report · Mar 24, 2020

Kind of shocking... ...leaves me speechless... ...not only leaving current customers in the lurch.... ..but even in terms of COVED Home work, and with AWS apparently still wanting to build this business, offering 50 users free trial through end of June [https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/pricing/].

Why drive away bigger cycle customers by putting Adobe graphic users out of reach? ...as a lot of power business customers user Acrobat as a core work flow package.

But, there you go... ...who would have thunk?

gvh_dv

Report · Apr 21, 2020

First of all, I want to make it clear that I am not part of the Adobe staff, their official response can already be read in this post and in the system requirements of its products in which Windows Server is not included as a supported operating system.

But I am a photographer and at the same time an IT architect who works in a well-known multinational company and today I bring you a temporary solution (workarround) to the problem described in this post, so that from a technical point of view you can use Adobe products within Amazon WorkSpaces. I am not going to go into business aspects, if it should be done or if it is recommended, I only intend to help whoever sees the need to use it.

I don't know if someone will read me or if someone will have answered it in some other post, but today, April 21, 2020, I managed to install Adobe Photoshop CC on an Amazon Workspace virtual computer.

The problem with the installation process failing after the login process is due to the default Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Settings preventing scripts from running. Disabling these settings the installation process works correctly, once logged in to the browser, the installer correctly recognizes the credentials and proceeds to download the components of the Creative Cloud Desktop application.

You can see more details in this video that I recorded with the installation process.

https://youtu.be/-j1wYt9d5Pc

Report · Apr 21, 2020

Thanks, Henry.

I shall review?

Regards,

gvh

Report · Apr 21, 2020

I hope it works for you too and helps your business.

Report · Aug 13, 2020

I'd like to be able to use Adobe Creative Suite Apps with the Graphics Pro AWS! Adobe needs to make this possible ASAP!

Report · Aug 13, 2020

You can look at my previous post where I indicate a solution. Installation problems are caused by an issue with Internet Explorer security settings

Report · Aug 14, 2020

But I was using Chrome. People use Explorer?

Report · Aug 14, 2020

It doesn't matter that you use the Google Chrome browser to surf the internet. Internet Explorer is installed by default in the operating system and is used internally by the Creative Cloud installation program.

You can see the configuration procedure in the youtube video that I uploaded, although it is in Spanish, you can easily see the configuration to be made

Report · Dec 02, 2020

Hi, we're facing the same problems. There are fancy keynotes about "Studio in the cloud" - but if you want to build this, you cannot even install Creative Cloud because of Internet Explorer settings causing a blank login / licensing screen? WTF.

We managed to eliminate one screen by creating a Group Policy in Active Directory to disable "IE enhanced security". But this is not all. If a user has reached the activation limit, another white screen will appear. We have no clear "recipe" to get rid of this second blank screen yet. At least no repoducable way and this is what you need if you build such an environment.

None of these issues are mentioned in any AWS sales video / presentation. There may be solutions, but they require to dive deep into the very ugly Windows Server administration world.

Problem is, that some company representative watches all these fancy videos and asks staff to implement it. It's hard to convince them that it's not the right time to implement it. Because these videos show working environments and happy users - I have not seen one outside of these sales-videos.

Amazon workspaces - do adobe products work - yes or no answer please.

1 Correct answer