I interviewed Wowza customer support about selecting EC2 instances that meet the minimum recommended specifications for running Wowza Streaming Engine, so I’ll introduce the content.

Specifications required by Wowza Streaming Engine

The specifications required by Wowza Streaming Engine are properly documented on the official website.

Below is a partial quote with Japanese translation:

• Source: Media Server Requirements & Specs | Wowza Media Systems

Minimum recommended production hardware CPU: Single quad core, 3.00 GHz or better RAM: 4GB Disk: 2 or more in RAID 0 (striping) Network: 1Gbps Ethernet

CPU: 3.00 GHz, 4 cores x 1 RAM: 4GB Disk: 2 or more disks in RAID 0 (striping) Network: 1Gbps Ethernet

High-load recommended production hardware CPU: Dual quad-core or a single hex-core, 3.00 GHz or better RAM: 16-32GB Disk: 2 or more in RAID 0 (striping) Network: 10Gbps Ethernet

3.00 GHz 8 cores x 2 or 16 cores x 1 RAM: 16-32GB Disk: 2 or more disks in RAID 0 (striping) Network: 10Gbps Ethernet

Investigation of EC2 instances that can use Wowza Streaming Engine

I selected instances that meet Wowza Streaming Engine requirements from various AWS EC2 instance types.

• インスタンスタイプ - Amazon EC2 (仮想サーバー) | AWS

General Purpose

T2

T2 are burstable performance instances, so they don’t fit the purpose since consistent performance is required.

• Amazon EC2 T2 インスタンス | AWS

M5, M4 At 2.3 GHz ~ 2.5 GHz, the CPU specifications don’t seem to be met.

• Amazon EC2 M5 インスタンス – 汎用コンピューティングワークロード

However, checking AWS Marketplace: Wowza Streaming Engine (Linux PAID) shows m3.large ★ Vendor Recommended, so m5.large or m4.large should work normally.

These instances might be good choices when setting up edge servers.

Compute Optimized

C5 CPU base clock is 3.0 GHz, so if C5 instances are available, let’s adopt this.

For CPU, you need to select at least c5.xlarge or higher instances with vCPU 4.

• Amazon EC2 C5 Instances — Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Amazon EC2 コンピューティング最適化インスタンス C5 | Amazon Web Services ブログ

C4 Since C5 is not yet available in Japan region, C4 might be chosen for domestic use.

C4’s CPU Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 has a base clock of 2.9GHz and turbo up to 3.5 GHz, so CPU specifications are barely not met.

Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 - CM8064401675902 Amazon EC2の新インスタンス「C4ファミリー」を触ってみた ｜ Developers.IO

However, when I consulted Wowza customer support, for our current requirements, Transcode was not needed on the Wowza Streaming Engine server, so c4.2xlarge would be fine. They said there are no concerns about CPU, but network bandwidth usage needs to be considered depending on the bitrate of the videos being distributed.

They said c4.2xlarge would be fine for the following requirements:

• Frame size: 384x288
• Video bitrate: 80k, 120k
• Codec: h264, vp8

Memory Optimized

Since this doesn’t require a lot of memory, it doesn’t fit the purpose.

Accelerated Computing

Wowza customer support recommended g2.8xlarge from G2 instances when Transcode is needed on the Wowza Streaming Engine server.

Now G3 is the latest, and if available in regions where it can be used, G3 would be cheaper, so g3.8xlarge would probably be better.

• Amazon EC2 G3 Instances — Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• 旧世代のインスタンス - Amazon EC2 | AWS
• Amazon Web Services ブログ: 【AWS発表】4倍のGPU能力を備えた新しいG2インスタンスタイプ

Also, Wowza’s official website publishes Transcoder performance benchmarks, which might be helpful for reference.

• Wowza Transcoder Performance Benchmark

Storage Optimized

Since this doesn’t require a lot of storage, it doesn’t fit the purpose.

Summary: Use C5, C4 or G3, G2 instances

Roughly summarizing EC2 instances that can use Wowza Streaming Engine:

• If not transcoding: C5 or C4
• If transcoding: G3 or G2

That’s all from the Gemba where I’m considering server configuration for Wowza Streaming Engine.