[Knowledge Base]

Summary
The EchoSystem Server is distributed with a version of Wowza Media Server Pro that, by default, is installed with ESS and runs concurrent with it on the same physical host. We call this an "internal" configuration.

Some system and network administrators may find it advantageous, however, to use a dedicated server solely for the purpose of streaming the Flash content that the ESS produces, in order to spread the bandwidth load across multiple nodes or separately manage streaming content from the EchoSystem and other sources from a central location. The ESS supports a variety of such Flash streaming solutions, including Adobe Flash Media Server and vanilla distributions of the Wowza server. This howto article will explain the process of preparing Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3 to work with ESS in an "external" configuration.

Preparing for Installation
The first step is to determine whether your FMS will be installed on the same machine as your ESS, as this will determine if there is a need to co-locate your Flash content; i.e., to place it in a file system remote to the ESS via a network share so that the FMS can access it locally. If everything—the ESS, the FMS, and the flash content—are planned to exist on the same physical device (or with the content located on a mounted SAN volume), then you can forego the following section. Simply make a note of your Flash Folder (this is configured in the System Settings page of your ESS) so that you can point FMS to it later on.

Co-locating the Flash Content
In order for the Flash server to find and stream Flash content, that content needs to be stored in a drive letter-addressable (i.e., logically local) location either physically attached to your FMS host or on the network as a SAN volume. We do not recommend storing the content on a location that is logically remote to the Flash server, such as a NAS or UNC-addressable location, since this will generate unnecessary network traffic that could be detrimental to the performance of the streaming server.

The ESS will need to transfer the Flash content over the network to the location you have chosen for the content storage. This requires that we make this location accessible via a network share. If you are using a common SAN volume for all of your content, you can skip the following steps, making sure that the Flash Folder parameter under the streaming settings heading of your ESS system settings page matches the location where you want your Flash server to be looking for its content files.

The following instructions assume that FMS 3 is installed on a Windows server; if you are using a Linux distribution, please refer to the instructions specific to your network file sharing solution (e.g., Samba) to set up a network share.

1. Using Windows Explorer on your FMS machine, navigate to the folder where the root of your Flash content will be stored; i.e., D:\echo\flash
2. Right-click the folder, and select "Properties."
3. Under the "Sharing" tab, click the radio button labeled "Share this folder." Give it a unique, recognizable share name. This will be the path element to which you will refer later on in the UNC path that defines the share (e.g., if you specify "flash," it will be something like \\hostname\flash\). Leave the user limit set to "Maximum allowed."
4. Click the "Permissions" button. You will see the "Share Permissions" tab. Here we will set the permissions for access to the folder at the share level.
5. Click "Add..."
6. If you are on an Active Directory managed domain, add the name of the Computer account for the system that is running your ESS. Otherwise, you will have to configure your ESS to run as a separate, privileged user in its Windows service settings, under the "Log On" tab of its properties dialog, and add that same user account on this machine.
7. You may click "Check Names" to verify the group and/or accounts that you have entered into the list. This may require you to authenticate. When you are satisfied that the information is correct, click "OK."
8. Select the account name you specified in step 6 from the "Group or user names:" list.
9. Check the box under the "Allow" column for each of the permissions you wish to give to the selected account. We strongly recommend that you allow "Full Control" to the user and/or computer accounts representing your ESS; otherwise, the ESS may not be able to place content here.
10. Click "OK" to commit the changes.
11. Select the "Security" tab. Here we will set the permissions for access to the folder at the file system level.
12. Repeat steps 5 through 9, using the same group and/or accounts that you did for the share-level permissions.
13. Click "Apply" and "OK" to commit the changes.
14. Optionally, but as a recommended step, log in to the machine running your ESS (and, if you have specified one, as the user account running ESS) and attempt to connect to the share you just created using its UNC path. You should be able to view, create, delete, and rename files.

Configuring the Streaming Application
Adobe FMS 3 relies on virtual servers, called "applications," to serve the right kind of content based on the document root given in URL requests. FMS 3 is installed with a set of default applications that reside in its program files folder. In order for FMS to work with content from your EchoSystem, we must create a new application based on the default Video-on-Demand (called "vod") application. We will call this application "echo."

1. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder where the program files for Adobe FMS 3 are installed.
2. Enter the "applications" folder.
3. Create a copy of the "vod" folder and call it "echo".
4. Enter the "echo" folder.
5. Open the Application.xml file in Wordpad for editing.
Line 5 contains a <Streams> directive that is currently set to /;{$VOD_DIR}.
Change this to read /;{$ECHO_DIR}.
6. Save and close the file.
7. Return to the "conf" subfolder under the FMS program files root.
8. Open the fms.ini file in Wordpad for editing.
Find the location in the file where the variable "VOD_DIR" is defined.
Add a new line, defining a new variable, "ECHO_DIR", using the same format as the other variable, to reflect the path you set up as the share in the section above.

Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3 is now configured to serve content from the location that you have set up for holding your Flash content. Start the service; if you have started it already, restart it to commit the configuration changes. At this point, the Flash Media Server (FMS) service should be already configured by default to launch on startup.

Configuring ESS
All of the infrastructure should now be in place for your external FMS. The final step involves configuring three entries in your ESS system configuration to recognize these changes.

1. Log in to your ESS and navigate to the Configuration -> System Settings page.
2. Click the "Edit" button at the bottom of the page.
3. Scroll down to the "Streaming Settings" heading.
4. For the "Flash Streaming" parameter, select External Flash Server. Do this even if the FMS is located on the same host as the ESS.
5. For the "External Flash URL" parameter, compose a URL consisting of the RTMP protocol, the FQDN of your FMS server, the application name (echo), and a _definst_ pointer, as follows:
rtmp://fqdn.of.fms.server/echo/_definst_

NB: The path elements of this URL do not map to path elements on the storage volume; here, "echo" is the name of an application and not the name of the folder in which the content is stored, and "_definst_" is a virtual pointer. If your URL contains more elements than the example shown here, or your ECHO_DIR folder contains additional subfolders above the content, FMS will not be able to locate the content.

6. For the "Flash Folder" parameter, type the UNC path (or the drive letter path, if using a SAN volume) of your Flash content folder, which was configured under the Sharing and Security section of this document. This should point to the same location you defined as the variable "ECHO_DIR" in the application config.
7. Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

Your ESS is now configured to call the external FMS when providing content to viewers. You may be prompted to restart ESS in order for the changes to take effect; check that no capture or processing tasks are currently running, then do so.