Server Requirements

Owned by Hannah Petty
Last updated: Nov 09, 2015Version comment
3 min read

In this section:

Supported Operating Systems

EchoSystem Server (ESS) and Media Processor are supported on the following operating systems:

Windows:

  • Windows Server 2012 - Standard, 64-bit. Pen/touch input was not tested.
  • Windows Server 2008 (and R2) - Standard or Enterprise Only, 64-bit.

Linux:  RHEL Server releases 6 and 7, 64-bit;  CentOS 6.5 32/64-bit.

Hardware Requirements

The hardware recommendations listed below are designed to serve a basic initial deployment scenario, and accommodate 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. Refer directly to the 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)

With respect to CPUs, while it is possible to use virtual CPUs, the ESS processes tend to generate very high CPU and disk I/O, making it a bad candidate for virtualization. Where possible, use physical CPUs on the ESS server.

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 = More concurrent processing jobs = Larger disk requirement. With 4 CPUs, 160GB is a minimum space recommendation.
  • Windows allows you to specify a separate data directory from the application files (where the processing is done); Linux does not. Regardless of OS, if you maintain the media processor application and the data on the same drive (the main partition), be sure to allow for sufficient space.
  • 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.

Supported Application Servers

Supported Third-Party Database Servers

You must use a third-party database server. For a list of supported third-party database servers, see Supported Third-Party Components of the Supported Technologies page.

Supported Web and Streaming Servers

EchoSystem presentations use standard HTML and can be served by any web server supporting the HTTP 1.1 protocol.

EchoSystem supports the use of Wowza Media Server or Adobe Media Server to stream on-demand and live content. See Configure the Flash Media Streaming Server.

For a list of supported web and streaming servers, see Supported Third-Party Components of the Supported Technologies page.

Supported File Transfer Servers

See File Transfer Servers.