Wowza Community

Main and Backup: Wowza Streaming Cloud Now that Akamai is Out

Now that Akamai is no longer avalible, How do I create a Main and Backup server in Wowza Streaming Cloud?

This was a decision made by Akamai to discontinue that stream sources feature in Jan 2020, not by Wowza and we do not have an alternative option to offer at this time.

We could potentially assist you by building a custom solution for you through our Pro Services team @George E Kennedy Jr.

https://www.wowza.com/professional-services

Hi - to the question above I still see primary and backup under stream targets though???

Thanks for your question!

First, a clarification on the original question. The single feature that has been discontinued is Akamai Stream Sources, not use of the Akamai CDN that is used for distribution of the video. As Rose mentioned, Stream Sources was provided by Akamai but is no longer a current offer. What this feature did was create redundancy through the network from your nearest Akamai point-of-presence to your Wowza transcoder instance. Your encoder would connect to the POP, the stream would be duplicated, and then sent to the network through 2 separate channels, and the better of 2 passed on to Wowza . With a duplicated input stream, if one failed, there was another Akamai could route to Wowza. This all happened before the stream was received by Wowza.

Stream targets are different, since they are all about where the video goes after your transcoder has processed it. As you mentioned, Primary and Backup stream targets can be set when creating a custom stream target. This causes Wowza to send a single stream to two ingest points, often also a CDN like Akamai. From the perspective of the Wowza transcoder, this provides downstream redundancy, from Wowza to the viewer. (Akamai Stream Sources was upstream) For this to work, some downstream component needs logic to select a stream, either as a component of the CDN or the player. This feature is still available and unaffected by the Akamai Stream Sources discontinuation, so please feel free to start or continue using it!

Thank you Robert.

@Robert Vacante @Rose Power-Wowza Community Manager

Robert, The Redundant feature was removed from the stream target. If there’s a solution I hope you can help. Main and Backup is necessity.

Hi George,

Redundant chunklists is still an available feature, as shown below, second from the bottom. Note that this currently is only available for Akamai HLS stream targets.

Akamai has recently played a role in redundancy, both for traffic inbound to Wowza Streaming Cloud, and for traffic outbound from Wowza Streaming Cloud. To help clear this up, here is a description of what they both do:

  • Akamai Stream Sources, now discontinued, delivered traffic from your encoder to Wowza Streaming Cloud via 2 routes to provide redundancy. This feature is no longer available.
  • Redundant chunklists: Only available with Akamai HLS targets, for delivery from Wowza Streaming Cloud to CDN and subsequently to viewers. This creates duplicated media segments (chunks) and duplicate media playlists (chunklists) within their master playlist, allowing a suitable player to change to the seconds stream if the first fails. Details are at: https://www.wowza.com/docs/deliver-a-redundant-hls-stream-with-wowza-streaming-cloud

I hope this helps!

Robert

@George_E_Kennedy_Jr1 Hi George, did you manage to establish a solution for a Primary and Backup stream? I also feel that this is a necessity and need to find a solution or consider other options.

Thanks,