Some Questions. Server config, bitrates, bandwidth, connections

Hi Dejan-S,

You mentioned that your company is trying out FMS to see if it fits your usecase. So I would broadly like to know what is your usage like.Also which version of FMS have you downloaded?

From your question 3 I can make an assumption that your want to make available you media files for some one to view them by streaming them using FMS. On this assumption I will attempt to answer your questions:

1. My memory(%) usage are on steady on about 80%, what does that mean, to little RAM or?

Yes a higher RAM would definitely help, we recommend 2GB at the minimum. Also you could tune your server by using the SERVER.FLVCACHE_MAXSIZE of fms.ini file at FMS Root directory/conf. You could set it to a higher value provided you have sufficient RAM so FMS would use this space for caching the streaming content and serve your video on demand usage better.Typically you could try setting the SERVER.FLVCACHE_MAXSIZE to 1/4th of your server's RAM size.

You might have taken a look at http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediainteractive/systemreqs/

2. Is there any Specific Server Configurations I could do to the server to make it perform better?

Are you using the vod application at FMS Root directory/applications for streaming? If not you could try using that app and also take a look at the configurations made in the Application.xml(located in vod directory) there which could act as a guideline for fine tuning your server.

The section name "Tuning server performance" in the flashmediaserver_3.5_tech_overview.pdf at FMS Root directory/documentation might also give you some insight into this area.

3. What specifics should I convert the FLV files into. Are there any "Default or general" so to speak? Frames, Bitrate, Picture ratio ect.. this is where I have no idea.

A lot of that would depend on your final deployment(the hardware resources that you are allocating) and if it will be able to handle the higher bitrate files. The frames and picture ratio too is your choice on how  much crispness you want to bring to your video files.

Also wanted to let you know FMS supports MP4 format as well which means you could use H.264 and HE-AAC codecs in your media files.

4. We are maybe gone have about a 1k users on this maximum. How much bandwidth does that demand?

It would depend on factors like how high a bitrate video files are you streaming and if all the all the 1000 users are connected to FMS server and streaming at the same time. It would be tough to give an estimate just based on number of users.

5. I have installed the FMS on my server machine. I have not done any configurations to the FMS what so ever. Now I have uploaded a test site(html) with the movie trailer from iron man 2, it is a flv downloaded from youtube. file is about 11mb.. when I run it on one 1 browser window it play good, but then i open up like 7 windows and run the clip at the same time it starts to freeze and load a lot. Is is not supose to handle more then 6 connections? I thought maybe my compter was the problem but I got a pretty good setup with 10/10 fiber, wich should be enof to stream 6 clips right?

What could this possibly be that my server can not handle more connections?

I think it's your client machine which is unable to handle so many browsers playing video at the same time.So I guess you could try opening the browsers on different client machine and see that you are able to get the ideal experience.

Also if your use case is video on demand, then you could also make use of the Edge-Origin deployment of FMS where in you make use of the FMS edge server's capability to cache streaming content and serve users seeking the same content instead of fetching it from the FMS origin server all over again.

You could take a look at the flashmediaserver_3.5_tech_overview.pdf at FMS Root directory/documentation and look for  "Deploying Edge Servers" to get more idea.

I hope this helps.

Thanks

Mamata