Supported Technologies

Overview

It is nearly impossible for Echo360 to replicate all possible variants of the many environmental conditions in our customer networks. Instead, we develop and test our products in a reasonable subset of core environments (focusing on primary industry standards) and share that information with you, our customers. We want you to understand what we have tested, and to understand the risks associated with deviation from those tested environments.

To ensure operational effectiveness, every attempt should be made by Echo360 customers to comply with the environmental standards contained herein. Echo360 understands that our customers are faced with many factors when choosing IT infrastructure and respects the business decisions of our audience. The intent here is not to forcibly drive those business decisions, but instead to establish a framework within which risk is understood. Should a customer decide to deviate from the aforementioned standards, it is agreed that the customer assumes the operational risk and at some point, Echo360 might not be able to resolve a reported technical problem.

Support for Older Versions of the EchoSystem Server

As a general rule, Echo360 supports the currently released version of the EchoSystem Server (ESS) along with the previous version.

• You can always contact Technical Support for help with old versions of the software.
• We will suggest that you migrate to the newest release if we know that upgrading will resolve the issue.

Existing Customers

All of the supported technology information shown on this page applies to new and existing customers.

Supported Operating Systems

The following table lists the operating systems supported for the installation of the ESS, Media Processor, as well as Classroom Capture and Personal Capture.

Supported Third-Party Components

The following table lists the supported third-party components. 

Browsers

Our general goal is to support the latest major version of 4 widely used browsers for each platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux) at the time of initial deployment, as shown below.

We develop using industry standards so other browsers may work, but we do not fully test or support them.  We also understand that on-going updates in browsers and integrated components (Java, Flash) may introduce issues. We will respond to these issues in later releases.

Variable speed playback (VSP) is supported by newer browsers that adhere to the HTML5 standard, as shown below.  

VSP is supported only for Audio/Display (A/D) and Audio/Display/Display (A/D/D) inputs. Video input is not supported. An asterisk (*) indicates that the browser is not supported or has not been tested by Echo360.  A double asterisk (**) indicates that the operating system does not support the feature.  

Mobile Platforms

The EchoCenter is supported on the mobile platforms listed below. 

The EchoPlayer is supported on the mobile platforms listed below. 

Hardware Requirements

The hardware recommendations listed below are designed to serve a basic initial server deployment scenario, with modest growth:

• Up to 10 classrooms,
• 25 Personal Capture users,
• 10-50 hours of capture per day, and
• up to 250 concurrent student views

These requirements are provided for the EchoSystem Server and the EchoSystem Media Processor, for additional information, please see Server Requirements. Refer directly to vendor documentation for supporting server hardware recommendations.

Minimum Recommended EchoSystem Server Hardware

• 4 Physical Core CPUs or 4 virtual CPUs (see note below)

• 8GB RAM

• 80GB HDD minimum, providing space for the OS, the ESS application, plus additional storage for content (200 GB or more is recommended)

• Two dedicated 1 Gbit or higher network interfaces (one for ESS, streaming, and HTTP content; one for file transfer)

Minimum Recommended EchoSystem Media Processor Hardware

• 4 Physical Core CPUs or 4 virtual CPUs

• 8GB RAM

• 160GB HDD minimum, providing space for the OS, the application, and data (200GB or more recommended)

With respect to Media Processor recommendations, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• More CPUs = Larger disk requirement. With 4 CPUs, 160GB is a minimum space recommendation.
• With respect to CPU's, while it is possible to use virtual CPU's, the media processing generates very high CPU and disk I/O, making it a bad candidate for virtualization.  Where possible, use physical CPUs for EchoSystem Media Processors.
• Windows allows you to specify a separate data directory from the application files (where the processing is done); Linux does not. If you maintain the media processor application and the data on the same drive (the main partition), be sure there is sufficient space for everything.
• Processing long recordings, and especially editing long recordings, consumes a lot of temporary space on the media processor. As a result, be sure your configuration allows for at least 32 GB of free space on the main partition at all times (the partition onto which the media processor application is installed).

• For a large production system, calculate space based on 40GB per CPU core. In addition, if the media processor server contains 8 cores or more, we strongly suggest that you specify the data directory to be 2 or more RAID 0 SAS drives. The reason is that without the RAID, the disk I/O for the processing becomes a bottleneck, wasting the additional core processing capability. Using a RAID for data also allows you to plan for future growth and to scale the system appropriately.

• Please review the Migration Guide for migration-specific configuration recommendations.

File Transfer Servers

EchoSystem has a built-in file transfer capability using either SFTP with blowfish encryption or SFTP without encryption. You can also use a file transfer server with any of the following protocols:

• SFTP with blowfish encryption
• SFTP with encryption "none"
• FTP

Media Import Supported Tools and Formats

See the Tools and Formats Supported section of the Import Other Media for Academic Staff page.  

The following table lists the currently tested and supported combination audio and video file types.