AMS Clustering

[Velislav Valov]

Hello!

We are planing to build AMS cluster to stream WebRTC. Our idea is part of our cluster machine to not serev content to end clients but to be an entry point for the video content that is comming from the encoders.

I was wondering how AMS distributes the transcoded content in the cluster. I want to send rtmp stream to one of the cluster machines. Do all the machines in the cluster transcode the stream for different connection speed or they just take the transcoded stream from this machine?

[Velislav Valov]

Find diagrams of two different scenarios in the picture below. Is it possible to create the "Scenario 2" scheme?

 

 

[Burak]

Hi,

We have documented our suggested cluster structure here.

As it is documented, we strongly suggest to separate origin severs and edge server. Actually origin servers are responsible for transcoding and edge servers are responsible for serving the video to end users. So, if you separate origin and edges, you can use more powerful instances for origins because they transcode the video. And less powerful machines for edges. Actually in your first diagram (scenario 1) you have already separated them. 

For the second scenario, it may still work but we don't recommend it. Because it may cause ineffective load balancing, network complexity on runtime, maintainability issues. 

 

[Velislav Valov]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. I checked the Scaling and Load Balancing chapter and I have some questions:

1. Are the origin AMS also part of the cluster but marked in the DB as non serving end users?

2. Should I point my studio stream straight to one server? If this is the case, what happens when I need to shutdown this specific server for maintenance or it goes out of order suddenly for some reason?

 

[Burak]

1. Are the origin AMS also part of the cluster but marked in the DB as non serving end users?

Actually a node doesn't know whether it is origin or edge. You will determine that with the load balancer settings. Generally we are using different ports for origin and edge servers. For example, the load balancer can forward 443 to origins and 5443 to edges.

2. Should I point my studio stream straight to one server? If this is the case, what happens when I need to shutdown this specific server for maintenance or it goes out of order suddenly for some reason?

You can create redundant servers for backup and such unexpected conditions.This is done by some customers.

[Velislav Valov]

Thanks! We will probably experiment with 2 load balancers - one for origin servers and one for edge servers