Don’t Unplug That Server! Fault-Tolerant Streaming With ClearCaster
By Jim Bask
From nectoday.com
Recently, I was supporting our CEO, Dave Stubenvoll, by providing an onsite customer demonstration of the Wowza ClearCaster™ appliance. Suddenly, right in the middle of our session, Dave intentionally pulled the 120-volt power cord from the unit.
While maintaining composure, on the inside, I was freaking out! In my mind, I screamed, “Dave, why would you do that?!”
What I didn’t yet realize was that the Wowza ClearCaster device is designed to automatically resume streaming when power is restored. This incident, while terrifying, actually showcased the resiliency of our ClearCaster hardware, and how it can consistently recover from a power outage.
The Fault-Tolerant Server Keeps Going, and Going…
In most instances, removing power—or disrupting a physical server in any capacity—is a very bad idea. Candidly, even having witnessed the ability of our branded hardware to recover from loss of power, the idea of showing that off in an on-site demo makes me a little nervous. Most of us in the industry shy away from “messing around” with a server once it’s up and running.
My friend, Richie Murray with Bridge Digital, would certainly disagree with me. Over a period of months, I had been running into Richie at various industry events, where he kept trying to get me excited me about a “fault-tolerant server” that he was convinced would be perfect for streaming. He claimed to have this device that would “keep on going” when any primary component became compromised during operation.
It sounded like a great idea, but I wasn’t sold. Prior to working with ClearCaster, I’ve worked with people all over the world, in every aspect of the industry, and have never encountered a situation where a media server could be compromised, yet “keep on going.”
Video streaming is complex and resource-intensive. The thought of a server maintaining a transcoding and packaging workflow—to a maximum scale—while losing a hard disk, power supply or motherboard component sounded very far-fetched to me. But then again, Richie is a stand-up guy, and I realized he may be onto something… read more