Update Wowza Streaming Engine on an EC2 instance

This guide provides instructions for updating a licensed Wowza Streaming Engine™ media server software installation on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The process involves downloading the updater locally, connecting to the Amazon instance securely over SSH, uploading the updater to the instance, and running it. Then, verify that the updater executed successfully.

Notes:

Get the updater


  1. Sign in to your account on the Wowza portal.
  2. On the Downloads tab, click the current Wowza Streaming Engine update to download it to your local computer.
  3. When the download completes, extract the contents of the .zip file so that you have a WowzaStreamingEngine-Update-[version] folder that contains all of the updater files.

Prepare to connect


Before transferring the updater to your EC2 instance over an SSH connection, make sure the key-pair .pem file for your SSL certificate is hidden in a SSH directory and that the directory and .pem file have the proper permissions.

You’ll need your Amazon instance’s domain name and ID to complete this task. For instructions on finding them, see Get the instance public domain name and ID.

  1. In a Terminal window, copy the key-pair .pem file into the SSH directory:
cp [key-pair].pem ~/.ssh
  1. Make the .pem file private and restrict directory access to yourself:
chmod 600 .ssh/[key-pair].pem
chmod 700 .ssh

Connect to the instance


When your permissions are configured, use Terminal to connect to the EC2 instance over SSH.

  • Execute the command:
ssh -i ~/.ssh/[key-pair].pem ec2-user@[public-IP-address]

where

  • [key-pair].pem is your key-pair .pem file and
  • [public-IP-address] is the public IP or DNS host of your EC2 instance

Stop Wowza Streaming Engine


The update can't be applied while Wowza Streaming Engine is running, so make sure it's not running on the EC2 instance.

  • Stop Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Streaming Engine Manager:
sudo service WowzaStreamingEngine stop
sudo service WowzaStreamingEngineManager stop

Apply the update


You’ll need an FTP client to upload the updater to the EC2 instance.

  1. In a Terminal window, go to the directory on the instance where Wowza Streaming Engine is installed:
cd /usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine-[version]
  1. Recursively open permissions for the updates subdirectory and its contents:
sudo chmod -R 777 updates
  1. Using an FTP client, connect to the instance using the following settings:

Note: The specific settings vary slightly depending on the FTP client.

  • Protocol – SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)
  • Server or Host – The EC2 instance public IP address
  • Port – 22
  • Logon type – Key file
  • Username – ec2-user
  • Password – Your EC2 password
  • SSH private key – Your key-pair .pem file
  1. When you're connected to the instance, in the FTP client, navigate to the the updates folder inside the directory of the installed version of Wowza Streaming Engine: /usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine-[version]/updates on the remote site.
  2. Drag the unzipped updater folder WowzaStreamingEngine-Update-[version] from your local computer to /usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine-[version]/updates to transfer it to the remote site.
  1. When the transfer is complete, in Terminal, go to the Linux directory in the updater on the instance:
cd updates/WowzaStreamingEngine-Update-[version]/linux/
  1. Update permissions so that the updater can execute:
sudo chmod +x *.sh
  1. Execute the update, responding to the prompts in Terminal to complete the process.
sudo ./update.sh

Confirm the update


When the update completes, verify it by starting Wowza Streaming Engine on the EC2 instance, then opening Wowza Streaming Engine Manager and checking the version.

  1. Start Wowza Streaming Engine and Wowza Streaming Engine Manager on the instance:
sudo service WowzaStreamingEngine start
sudo service WowzaStreamingEngineManager start
  1. In a web browser, go to http://[public-domain-name]:8088/enginemanager and sign in with the username wowza and your Amazon Instance ID as the password.
  2. Click Server in the menu bar and then click About in the Server contents panel.
  3. Confirm that the Wowza Streaming Engine Version and Wowza Streaming Engine Manager Version are those of the updater you just applied.