Wowza on AWS EC2 with AWS ClounFront

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi,

I’m new to Wowza.

I’m planning to initially use Wowza on AWS using the “Cost per Hr” licensing model.

Initially we’ll only be using Wowza to live stream a 1Hr presentation once a month to <500 clients, but this will over time become fortnightly then weekly presentations. We’ll also be doing a 3Hr presentation once a year.

We plan to upload the video in 1024x576 at 1536kbps from WireCast and we want to offer HLS streams at 1024x576 at 1536kbps and 512x288 at 256kbps to the clients. DVR support is required on the streams.

We don’t see much point in higher resolutions or bit rates as the audio is the most important component on the presentations.

I’m learning towards using AWS CloudFront so I don’t have to consider running multiple Wowza servers, but if I’m open to recommendations.

The questions I have about Wowza are:-

1/ Is there a AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0?

The latest reference I can find on the Wowza site is in this article “https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-bring-your-wowza-streaming-engine-license-to-cloudfront-live-http-streaming#cloudformation” and when click on the respective links the create stack page references this template “https://s3.amazonaws.com/wowzamediasystems/cloudformation/live-http-streaming-wowza-streaming-engine-4-5-using-cloudfront.txt”

2/ If there is no AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 currently available are there plans to release a template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 in the near future?

3/ If there are no plans to release a AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 how does someone go about updating the Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 instance created by the CloudFormation template to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 when running Wowza Streaming Engine under the “Cost per Hr” licensing model?

4/ As it appears that Wowza only release AWS AMI images for major releases such 4.5 or 4.6 and not for point releases such as 4.6.0.02, how does someone go about updating Wowza Streaming Engine to point releases such as 4.6.0.02 (or a subsequent update) when running Wowza Streaming Engine under the “Cost per Hr” licensing model?

5/ What size AWS instance should I be using for this project? Would a m3.large be sufficient or should I be looking at m3.xlarge or something else?

Thanks in advance.

Les

2

Hello Les,

Though your questions were answered in a Ticket, some time ago I did want to repost the answers for others to reference as needed:

1/ Is there a AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0?

The latest reference I can find on the Wowza site is in this article “Bring a Wowza Streaming Engine license to CloudFront” and when click on the respective links the create stack page references this template"https://s3.amazonaws.com/wowzamediasystems/cloudformation/live-http-streaming-wowza-streaming-engine-4-5-using-cloudfront.txt"

The latest pre-configured Streaming Engine virtual machine runs Wowza Streaming Engine software version 4.6.0

https://www.wowza.com/docs/wowza-streaming-engine-for-amazon-ec2-quick-start-guide

You can also use the AWS tools:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/cfn-using-cloudformer.html

2/ If there is no AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 currently available are there plans to release a template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 in the near future?

See the updated response for #1

3/ If there are no plans to release a AWS CloudFormation template for Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 how does someone go about updating the Wowza Streaming Engine 4.5.0 instance created by the CloudFormation template to Wowza Streaming Engine 4.6.0 when running Wowza Streaming Engine under the “Cost per Hr” licensing model?

4/ As it appears that Wowza only release AWS AMI images for major releases such 4.5 or 4.6 and not for point releases such as 4.6.0.02, how does someone go about updating Wowza Streaming Engine to point releases such as 4.6.0.02 (or a subsequent update) when running Wowza Streaming Engine under the “Cost per Hr” licensing model?

You will need to have SSH access to the EC2 instances and apply the update patch as outlined in the following tutorial.

Unfortunately, we do not have an unattended update mechanism at the moment. I will also make sure to forward this to our Product Manager to be included as a possible enhancement.

5/ What size AWS instance should I be using for this project? Would a m3.large be sufficient or should I be looking at m3.xlarge or something else?

This really depends on the quality and number of your incoming streams, and whether you will be using additional features that may require CPU resources (such as transcoder and nDVR). It is best to perform a load test on a single instance so that you have an idea of the optimal load on a particular spec.

We have the following benchmark statistics for a given transcoded rendition. Unfortunately, due to the wide variety of non-transcoded workflows, we do not have benchmarks for these scenarios. The transcoder benchmarks should still give you an idea of the capacity of a given server spec.

We do provide a load test tool that you can use to test a given server spec.

Optimally, your servers should have at most 50-60% resource usage.

Regards,

Jason Hatchett
Wowza Media Systems Support Team

3

Wow. It looks great AWS EC2 seems quite a good option to for wowza. I have even concluded AWS benchmark report to see if it is really a quality host or It is just some influencers who call AWS as the best cloud hosting provider in the industry. The article on AWS benchmark is published on Cloudways. you can see it yourself for benchmarking test results.