Quick Start Guide

This article describes the minimum requirements to launch a Wowza Media Server® 3.5 for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud™ (Amazon EC2) instance, enabled for RTMP streaming as an example. To learn more about how to enable additional streaming formats and for more advanced deployment scenarios, see the Wowza Media Server 3.5 for Amazon EC2 User's Guide.

Contents

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• Introduction
• Create AWS account
• Start AWS Management Console
• Choose a Wowza Media Server AMI
• Launch the instance
• Get the instance public domain name
• Test the instance
• Terminate the instance

Introduction

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This document describes how to install and configure Wowza Media Server 3.5 on Amazon EC2, an Amazon web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon EC2 is a cloud-computing platform that virtualizes computing resources as virtual machines. A single virtual machine configuration is registered as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Wowza Media Systems provides Amazon Linux AMIs with pre-configured and tuned versions of Wowza Media Server 3.5 that are ready to start using the Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) Management Console.

This document assumes that you're familiar with Wowza Media Server. If you aren't familiar with Wowza Media Server, you can get a free 30-day trial license for Wowza Media Server 3.5 by completing a request form on the Wowza Media Server 3.5 Trial webpage. The Wowza Media Server 3.5 Trial Edition download includes the Wowza Media Server software, all premium AddOns, documentation, and examples. The Wowza Media Server User's Guide contains comprehensive documentation about how to install and use the server.

After you have your client-side and server-side applications up-and-running on your computer, use this article to learn how to quickly deploy a Wowza Media Server 3.5 for Amazon EC2 instance. For more extensive deployment documentation, see the Wowza Media Server for Amazon EC2 User's Guide.

Create AWS account

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To get started using Wowza Media Server 3.5 for Amazon EC2, you must sign-in to or create an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account and then select one of the following licensing model options for each Wowza Media Server 3.5 for EC2 instance that you plan to use.

Option 1: Bring Your Own (LicKey)

The LicKey License option enables you to use your regular Subscription (Daily or Monthly) or Perpetual license key with your Wowza Media Server 3.5 for EC2 instance. When using this option, billing for your running instance time and bandwidth consumption is managed by Amazon. Wowza Media Server Subscription users will continue to receive a separate monthly invoice from Wowza® for usage of the Wowza Media Server software and AddOns. This option provides access to all Wowza Media Server functionality and all premium AddOns, including Wowza Transcoder (for 64-bit instances only), Wowza nDVR, and Wowza DRM.

Option 2: DevPay

The DevPay License option enables you to use a Wowza Media Server software license that's embedded in a pre-built Amazon DevPay™ AMI (a separate license isn't needed). This option provides the convenience of a combined monthly invoice from Amazon for running instance time, bandwidth consumption, and Wowza Media Server usage; however, it doesn't provide access to the premium AddOns.

Start AWS Management Console

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Management Console is a web interface that enables you to manage Amazon EC2 and Wowza Media Server 3.5 AMIs from a web browser. Many users find that it's easier to use the Management Console instead of the EC2 command line tools.


To start the AWS Management Console, go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2 and sign in using the email address and password that you specified when you signed up for AWS.

The EC2 Dashboard will load in the Management Console. If a different dashboard is displayed, click the Services tab in the navigation bar at the top of the webpage, click All AWS Services, and then click EC2.

When you sign-in to the AWS Management Console for the first time, the upper-right side of the navigation bar displays a drop-down list called Select a Region. Wowza provides public Amazon Linux AMIs that are preconfigured to launch in specific regions. For more information about how to select a region for your Wowza Media Server for EC2 instance, see Choose a Wowza Media Server AMI.

Choose a Wowza Media Server AMI

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Wowza provides public Amazon Linux AMIs with pre-configured versions of Wowza Media Server 3.5 that are ready to start through the AWS Management Console. You must get a current Wowza Media Server AMI ID for each Wowza Media Server 3.5 for EC2 instance that you plan to use.

Two collections of pre-built AMIs are listed on the Wowza Pre-Built AMIs webpage, organized by licensing option. Before you choose an AMI from one of these collections for your instance, be sure to consider the following factors:

• The licensing model option that you want to use (either LicKey or DevPay). For more information about the licensing options, see the Wowza on Amazon AWS webpage.
  
  
• The region that you want to use. For help in selecting a region that meets your requirements, see Regions and Availability Zones.

Clicking a link for a Wowza Media Server AMI ID opens the Request Instances Wizard in AWS Management Console. You can use this wizard to launch a Wowza Media Server 3.5 for EC2 instance that uses the selected licensing option and region. For more information, see Launch the instance.

Launch the instance

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To launch a Wowza Media Server 3.5 for Amazon EC2 instance, do the following:

1. In the Wowza Pre-Built AMIs webpage, click the link for the Wowza Media Server AMI that you want to use.
   
   
2. If you're signed-in to the AWS Management Console, it will start and the Request Instances Wizard will be displayed. If you're not signed-in, provide the email address and password that you specified when you signed up for AWS, and then sign in.
   
   
3. In the Request Instances Wizard, do the following (we recommend that you leave all optional settings at their default values unless specified otherwise below):
   
   
   1. On the INSTANCE DETAILs page, in Instance Type, select the instance type that you want to use. If you're not sure which instance type to select, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types. Because pricing per instance-hour can vary based on the selected instance type, see Amazon EC2 Pricing.
      
      
   2. On the CREATE KEY PAIR page, select Create a new Key Pair, and then follow the instructions that are displayed in the wizard.
      
      
   3. On the CONFIGURE FIREWALL page, select Create a new Security Group, and then fill out the form in the wizard. A security group defines firewall rules for your instance in the selected region. For the purposes of this article, open port 1935 in the firewall to enable RTMP streaming. To do this, on the Inbound tab in the lower pane, select Custom TCP rule in the Create a new rule list and then enter 1935 in the Port range box.
      
      
   4. On the REVIEW page, click Launch.
   
   
4. In the Navigation pane in AWS Management Console, click Instances to see the status of your EC2 instance. It may take several minutes for your instance to launch. After the instance State changes to running, the instance is started. It might take an additional minute or two after that before Wowza Media Server is available for streaming.

Get the instance public domain name

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You must use the public domain name (or hostname) of your running instance to access the instance remotely for streaming. To get the public domain name of your instance, do the following:

1. In the Navigation pane in AWS Management Console, under Instances, click Instances.
   
   
2. Select the running instance.
   
   
3. In the lower pane, click the Description tab. The Public DNS value is the public domain name of your running instance.

Test the instance

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You can quickly verify that your running Wowza Media Server 3.5 for EC2 instance is working correctly by using an example player on a remote computer to stream a sample video on-demand file from the instance. To get the example player, you can download the Wowza Media Server example files to the remote computer. To stream the sample on-demand video file from your running instance, do the following:

1. Extract the Wowza Media Server example files from the compressed (zipped) folder and then run the VideoOnDemandStreaming example installation batch file to install the example player:
   
   Code:

   [install-dir]/examples/VideoOnDemandStreaming/install.bat

2. Open the FlashRTMPPlayer example player in a web browser:
   
   Code:

   [install-dir]/examples/VideoOnDemandStreaming/FlashRTMPPlayer/player.html

3. In the FlashRTMPPlayer example player, enter the following information and then click the Connect button:
   
   Code:

   Server: rtmp://[instance-public-dns]/vod
   Stream: mp4:sample.mp4

   Where [instance-public-dns] is the public domain name of your Amazon EC2 instance running Wowza Media Server 3.5.

The Big Buck Bunny video should start to play.

Terminate the instance

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When you terminate an instance, you'll lose all changes or files that you have on the server. If you have anything that you don't want to lose, be sure to save it to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or to Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) before terminating the instance or you'll lose data. After you've saved your data, do the following to terminate the instance:

1. In the Navigation pane in AWS Managment Console, under Instances, click Instances.
   
   
2. Select the running instance.
   
   
3. Click the Actions button, and then click Terminate. The State column for the selected instance will show shutting-down and then terminated.

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