Seeking advice for self hosting

[bwalls]

We're looking to set up an internal and external Wowza servers. It's a government installation, so we have lots of security and documentation requirements.

Because we use Active Directory authentication, and it's supposed to be pervasive, using Windows would actually be easier for us to bring up, document, and manage.

Is there a strong reason to prefer Windows (would be Windows Server 2008 of some flavor, possibly Enterprise) or linux versions, other than the normal religious arguments? That is, specific reasons that apply to serving Wowza Media Server 2?

Any recommendations for a specific server, OS version, processor? Do we need to lean toward investing more for memory, or for processor power?

Is it possible to use AD credentials to limit access to content on the Wowza server? Or does Wowza have access to what it can access, and any control of streamed content has to be at an Apache or Wowza level?

[rrlanham]

Windows vs Linux is really preference.

A quad core server with 8 gigs of RAM, 64 bit OS and VM is the basic recommendation. Bandwidth is usually the limiting factor. Two 1gbs bonded nics will allow you to stream about 3000 500kbs streams. For video on demand multiple disks in RAID 0 or 10 array is recommended

See the Tuning Guide:
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1320

And the Security Package:
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1281

Hotlinkdenial prevents swf embedding:
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5239

Authentication example:
http://www.wowzamedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230

Richard