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BILLETKnowledge Base

How Billet fits together

The four parts of a Billet deployment, what each one does, and how a person gets from signing in to seeing their desktop.

For
Everyone
Applies to
Billet 1.0
Updated

Billet lets people in your organization open a desktop that runs on another machine: a workstation in the office, a GPU machine in a rack, or a virtual machine. You run every part of it yourself.

The four parts

Part Runs on What it does
Portal A Linux server you run Signs people in, knows which desktops each person may use, and hands out each session. Administrators manage everything from its console.
Relay A Linux server you run Carries a session's picture, sound and input between the person and the desktop when they cannot reach each other directly.
Host Each Windows or Linux machine people connect to Runs the Billet host agent, which captures the screen and sound and plays back keyboard and mouse input.
Desktop app Each person's Windows or Mac computer Lists the desktops a person may use, and opens a session window for one.

A person can also open a desktop in a browser tab, without the app, where your administrator allows it.

The portal can also broker Amazon DCV desktops, on Windows or Linux, which people open with the DCV client instead. See Add an Amazon DCV desktop.

What happens when someone connects

  1. They open the Billet app (or the portal's page in a browser) and sign in. Sign-in goes through your organization's identity provider over SAML 2.0, in the browser, so Billet never sees their password.
  2. The app shows the desktops assigned to them. They choose one and press Connect.
  3. The portal checks they are allowed that desktop, then tells both the app and the host how to reach each other for this one session.
  4. The session window opens with the desktop in it.

Hosts never need an open inbound port

Every host makes its own outbound connection to the portal and keeps it open. Nothing on the internet has to reach in to a host, so a host can sit behind NAT with no inbound firewall rules.

When a session starts, the person and the host connect one of two ways:

  • Directly, when the person's computer can reach the host on its media port. Your administrator decides whether this is allowed. See Direct and relayed connections.
  • Through the relay, which both ends dial out to. This works from anywhere the relay can be reached.

Tenants

One portal can serve several separate organizations, departments or clients. Each is a tenant, with its own people, its own desktops and its own single sign-on. A person in one tenant cannot see or reach a desktop in another.

Amazon DCV desktops

The portal can also manage desktops that run Amazon DCV (formerly NICE DCV). People sign in to Billet the same way and are sent to the DCV desktop through your DCV Connection Gateway. See Add an Amazon DCV desktop.

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