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?