Wowza Community

Quad core vs AWS instance?

Hello,

Q1

I am new to AWS and am confused by the HW requirements. If Wowza is suggested to run on a Quad core server, m1Large and below should be too small, though I see in the forums people are using it. Can please clarify?

Q2

I currently and doing progressive download of 20 min vod mp4s that are 1280x720 pixels at 2500 kbps. I’m looking o move these to Wowza. I suspect under 10 users at time will be playing them. What instance do you recommend?

Q3

I see you have Wowza instances, but I may run the sites(linux/apache) off the same instance. Should I build a Wowza AWS instance then install LAMP, or should I just install Wowza on an new instance?

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.

Hi,

Q1.

m1.small is considered to be the minimum requirement.

Not sure if you are planning on using this for Live streaming or VOD, but there are some simple benchmarks on

page 21/22 in the Wowza Media Server of EC2 Users Guide

Q2.

Disk I/O performance and network bandwidth are important factors in a Video On Demand (VOD) workflow.

Your requirements shouldn’t be very taxing at all, max 10 users at 2.5 Mbps each, with 20% network overhead,

should still only be about 30Mbps total. So the m1.small may meet your needs just fine. It is always best to test first

with your own content though, no matter what.

Q3.

Many do just what you describe, while others already have their website elsewhere and just point to

their Wowza instance(s). Wowza AMIs are ready to go, you could just spin one up and add in Lamp etc.

Be aware that when you terminate and instance data is lost unless you backup to persistent storage, such as S3 or EBS.

Look at the same page 21 mentioned in the guide in Q1 above, regarding ‘Terminating the Instance’.

Daren