EC2 wowza instance capacity?

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi Guys,

we are planning on deploying a couple of wowza instances, and would like to get an estimate on what output capacity we would get from small, large and extra large instances.

We are looking at supporting 3500 concurrent users at 500k.

We expect 70% of these to be cupertino streaming, 25% RTMP and 5% RTSP

we are trying to get an idea what amount of instanced would we need to safely handle this.

if you dont have this info, would your load test tool be of any use to us??

Thanks

Svyatko

2

Svyatko,

The small, large and xlarge get about 150, 250 and 350mbs throughput, resp

There several new instance types that we do not have numbers on: The high memory and high cpu types. At the high-end is m2.4xlarge, which might be significantly more than the xlarge, but we just don’t know at this time.

Another option is use subscription license (monthly cost) instead of the devpay AMIs (hourly charges) so that you can use instance types that are not available on devpay, in partiular the cg1.4xlarge which has 10gbs nic and is the only EC2 type with specific documented bandwidth. You may only be able to saturate half, but that would 5gbs.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/

Richard

3

Otherwise, you will probably need to use Liverepeater (origin/edge) and Load balancer.

You need about 1.8 gbs, round up to 2gbs throughput. Small is most cost effective. 15 - 20 small edges, a cg1.4xlarge origin, and a xlarge Load Balancer, as an approximate suggestion.

Richard

4

Steve,

One great thing about EC2 is that you do not have to make rough estimates, except for your actual usage factor. Otherwise you can know precisely what the costs will be:

https://www.wowza.com/pricing/ec2-streaming

Richard

5

Another option is use subscription license (monthly cost) instead of the devpay AMIs (hourly charges) so that you can use instance types that are not available on devpay, in partiular the cg1.4xlarge which has 10gbs nic and is the only EC2 type with specific documented bandwidth. You may only be able to saturate half, but that would 5gbs.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/

Richard

FYI, the cc1.4xlarge is probably the best high-end one for Wowza. Unless you’re thinking of using the GPU’s for transcoding purposes. (tho not sure if they support CUDA or anything like that, havn’t touched them yet)

$1.60/hr even if you only get 5gpbs out of it is well worth it over running 8 - 10 regular XLarge’s at $.68/hr for the same output bitrate.

–Chris

6

Svyatko,

Were you ever able to get a rough estimate for monthly cost to host what you mentioned above? I’m looking for a way to guestimate costs for the accountants, but so far, have been unable to find anything can take in rough stream size * user and calculate server and bandwidth costs. Even if it would be a crude estimate, it would be better than just “guessing” which is what the site is leading me to do now.

Thanks!

Steve