Load balancing on EC2 instances

[uzayizmir]

Dear Support Engineers,

Please correct me if I'm wrong :
At the time of this writing load balancing on instances which are launched on paid ami's(such as wowza) are not supported.

I've seen threads in which if ec2 elastic would work with wowza and it is replied as: it would work but not optimally.

This is probably due to the confusion that if one has a perpetual wowza license and this license is used on a non-paid ami instance, elastic loda balancing would actually work.

[rrlanham]

Wowza provides a load balancing system:

http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/con...ncing-solution

This provides techniques for distributing connections. It does not spin-up new instances, but you can monitor all edge servers from the load balancer over http:

http://[load-balancer-ip-address]:19...?serverInfoXML

This output could be the basis of an automated system, but for occasional live events you can just as well monitor yourself and startup new edge servers as needed.

Richard

[ecropolis]

Is the load balancing module installed by default on the EC2 AMI's?
Suggestions for scripting it into the startup package, if it isn't. I know I could download it from a bucket at launch; and install it automatically, if needed.

[rrlanham]

The ServerListeners for Load Balancer Listener and Sender are commented out in /conf/Server.xml. Otherwise it is not included by default, but there is a prepared startup package

http://wowzamediasystems.s3.amazonaw...eater-edge.zip

Richard

[ianbeyer]

If you'd like, I can also share the startup packages that we use.

[benbiles]

Hi, I think it would be really useful if someone has preconfigured startup packages for LIVE ORIGIN LOAD BALANCER LISTENER and LIVE REPEATER EDGE LOAD BALANCER SENDERS configured for both normal flash and http for Idevices. Also I am little confused as to how to add the IP address of the ORIGIN LOADBALANCER LISTENER to the EDGE LOADBALANCER SENDERS. do I add this to the EDGE startup package application.xml after I start the ORIGIN LOADBALANCER LISTENER AMI and i know the IP / dns name?

[ianbeyer]

The prebuilt packages referenced in the EC2 documentation are how I got started on loadbalancing on EC2.

http://wowzamediasystems.s3.amazonaw...ckagelist.html

[rrlanham]

I don't think there is a load balancer startup package. Here are the startup packages:
http://wowzamediasystems.s3.amazonaw...ckagelist.html

There is not much different about setup of Load Balancer for iOS. You won't need the "redirect" application that handles NetConnection method of redirect for Flash clients. You get the least loaded server with the HTTP method for non-Flash clients.

You add the address of the listener in the sender (edge) /conf/loadbalancertargets.txt file. This is covered in the Setup an "Edge" Server section of the Load Balance package README.html file.
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/con...ncing-solution

Yes, you have to know the IP of the origin and should add to the Edge startup package. You can use ElasticIP for your Origin Server so that you will know what is before you start it.

Richard

[benbiles]

ok, i think i have built startup packages with correct info including loadbalancertargets.txt on the edge. I tried to start an AMI in elastic fox and it complains about zip file size with, '' User data is limited to 16384 bytes '' do i have to include the [ wms-plugin-loadbalancer.jar ] in lib folder? thats 32 kb. why the restiction on size? surely i may need a lot of congig data in there one day with multiple applications! ok, will try now without jar, hopefuly its already in the AMI

[ianbeyer]

The user-data is limited to 16K (this is an Amazon limitation). You can add additional files with the Download command in the startup manifest. (see my blog post at http://blog.ianbeyer.com/archives/544 about customizing startup packages)

That being said, the jar file you're talking about is already on the EC2 image.