Need help configuring live audio streaming, redundant solution with rackspace / FLME

Hi !

Looking for a consultant to help explain / set up a redundant solution for live audio streaming. We currently use 1 wowza server at rackspace and connect from 1 Flash Live Media Encoder per event. We are seeking to add redundancy at encoding and streaming level so the more knowledge on both server / encoder the better. We need something that allows us to assure our customers that we have as much redundancy / fail safe a solution as possible.

We have just had 2 issues in the past week where connection was lost between the wowza server and the encoders, even though we did not lose internet connection so what we are looking for is protection from that happening, we have dual-band routers and redundant internet feeds for our encoders to ensure redundancy on the encoder side and are now looking at doing the same on the wowza side.

Questions I have are:

- How many wowza servers should we use for redundant / fail safe service

- the Flash Live Media Encoder has the ability to have a backup URL for streaming, I assume that will point to a backup wowza server

- how would / could we configure 2 live media encoders on an event

- Will this also add load balancing or is load balancing and redundant servers 2 different solutions, because I would be interested in both redundancy and load balancing if the it makes sense

I would be willing to pay for 10-30 hours of work for the right consultant.

Thanks in advance,

Brian Kathler

viavid.com