Server requirements for VOD

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hello,

I am doing a VOD application and I have no idea about the server requirements. Below is some of the background information.

The VOD database consists of 40,000 H.264 mp4 in 1280x720 resolution and in 2.5Mbps bit rate.

Number of concurrent users is around 200 clients. We assume each client will watch an unique mp4 video by VOD simultaneously, and no transcoding or re-encoding is required.

The duration of most of the videos is around 3 - 4 minutes.

Appreciate it if you could tell me what the server requirements are.

Thanks.

2

Hi

What is the average length of each file?

I would recommend a server with :

Fast disks (10K rpm) with enough storage for the content

A Gig E port

8GB RAM (minimum)

Jason

3

We recommend a late model quad or dual quad CPU, 4 - 8g ram, 64bit OS and 64bit Java (Sun JDK), and 1 - 4gbs nic.

For longtail vod content (what you describe) we recommend a RAID 0 or RAID 1+0 disk array with several disks.

Richard

4

Video duration would not affect hardware considerations.

Richard

5

We recommend a late model dual quad cpu, 4 - 8g ram, 64bit OS and 64bit Java/JDK, and for vod a RAID 0 or 1+0 with as many disks as you can afford.

The way to scale vod is with MediaCache and the Wowza load balancer.

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-scale-video-on-demand-streaming-with-media-cache

https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-get-dynamic-load-balancing-addon

Richard

6

That shouldn’t happen.

Ok so, we’re talking about a 3kbps video. My suggestion is to start over from a fresh install, and you changes one at a time and loadtest. See where the problem occurs. I feel that it should hang even with the un-optimized server using just 4 cores.

Any error messages in the console/logs? Do you notices any strange memory/CPU usage?

If you can’t get it sorted we’ll want to see more info. You can zip up your conf and logs folder and send in an email to support@wowza.com. Include a reference to this thread.

7

You can have 1 server instance and in [install-dir]/conf/VHost.xml you can specify a particular IP address or domain name, or set HostPortList/HostPort/IpAddress to * and Wowza will listen on all the NICs. See the VHost.xml section starting on page 11 in the Configuration Reference for more information.

-Lisa

8

I updated the duration of the videos for your consideration. Would you please provide me a suitable hardware configuration? Thanks.

9

Hi, Richard,

May I ask a little more about the NIC.

If I install 4 pieces of NIC, should I set up 4 instances of Wowza server for each NIC? (As each NIC has its own distinct IP address)

Would you please tell me more details about the configuration of 4 NIC and the Wowza server?

Thank you very much.

10

Following lincoln questions:

I am running one Wowza 3 instance in a:

  • 1 GB NIC

  • 12 CPU x Intel® Xeon® CPU L5640 @ 2.27GHz

  • 3.0.0-16-server Ubuntu

  • 18 GB Ram

I am using the same example application of VOD that your provide and I am requesting it via RTSP.

I only have one single video whith 89 MB size which is requested by different number of users concurrently. This video lasts about 4 minutes. After following the tunning guide I have increased Java Heap memory usage to 8000MB and also un-commented the Garbage Collector line. In addition I have modified suggested values in the /conf/VHosts.xml file, where I have set all the processor count values to 12.

When I connect 280 users (from another computer) to test the service, it seems to work for a while but suddenly after about 70 seconds Wowza process gets hang, all connections are closed, and I need to restart Wowza server to get it up again.

I think that 280 should be handled without any problem, as I have made other tests with other streaming software in the same hardware and 280 users are served without any kind of problem, reaching this maximum due to the nic, in any case due to other resources.

Do you think I am missing some kind of tunning configuration, or they are usual and acceptable figures?

Thank you.

11

Hi all,

I’m doing with VOD streaming, using adaptive with many bitrate (400kbps, 800kbps, 1.2Mbps, 1.8Mbps, 3Mbps).This VOD database is stored on storages.

When number of concurrent user is large (1000,10000, 100000), I don’t know requirements of server and storage.

Please help me.

Thanks

12

Thanks for your help, Richard