Specifications for a Locally hosted Planet eStream Secure Video Platform
To ensure your Planet eStream Secure Video Platform (SVP) can deliver a great experience to end users, major factors highlighted below need to be taken into consideration when implementing the Service on local infrastructure.
The specifications described here are suggested minimum levels for sites such as a single Secondary School sites with typical projected usage patterns. For more heavily loaded systems, higher specifications are recommended. It is generally easier in practice to scale resources in a virtual environment. For larger organisations, including Colleges or Universities with a large number of potential users, a hardware platform including 2 x Quad core Xeon CPUs and 16GB of RAM is likely to be a more suitable basic specification for a production Physical Server. A Virtual Server will also benefit from increased vCPU allocation and memory, for example 4 x vCPU and 16GB RAM.
Server Specifications for a Planet eStream SVP
Servers can be provisioned in Virtual Environments or as dedicated physical devices. Virtual servers can have advantages in terms of flexibility of deployment and scalability in regard to rapid server commissioning and decommissioning, CPU, RAM and Storage allocations.
Dedicated Physical Servers can provide very cost effective provision of server resources in terms of processing power, memory and large amounts of attached media storage.
• In a Virtual Environment (typically VM Ware/HyperV), minimum specification to include: 2 vCPU 8 GB RAM 80 GB System Disk **1.0 TB Media storage located on either Fibre or iScsi attached SAN, configured as an NTFS volume mounted as a Local drive (e.g. E:) Gigabit NIC
• For a Physical Server, minimum specification should include:
Quad Core Xeon or equivalent (64 Bit compatibility) 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC DIMMs DVD+-R/RW 250 GB SATA HDD System Disk **2TB Raid 5 array (recommended minimum for Media storage) 650Watt PSU Dual Gigabit Ethernet Controller Integrated Graphics
** Please note that these suggested sizes for Media Storage volumes are not actual minimum values, but practical guidelines that will provide an adequate medium term resource in most cases. Lower or higher values may be appropriate for specific cases. 1 TB of storage will host up to approximately 2000 hours of video content encoded at standard streaming media bitrates. HD media content will consume more disk space. Planet eStream does also support NAS storage locations, but directly mounted volumes are recommended in general for performance and ease of access security administration.
Operating System Requirements The Windows Server installation, either physical or virtual, must be Licensed. The License is to be provided by the customer. A basic operating system build, including .Net 3.5 features and hardware device drivers, should be pre-installed prior to the Planet eStream SVP installation. The machine should be joined to the domain if required. When performing the installation, either remotely or by attendance, the Planet eStream engineer will configure all the necessary roles and features which the Planet eStream SVP Solution requires. Please note the core server will require access to the internet to communicate with the central Planet eStream Connect Server to enable the use of the Planet eStream Connect Service feature.
Other Considerations for the Locally Hosted SVP Planet eStream SVP, by default, installs a locally available SQL Express instance on the specified server. The solution is also configurable to enable the databases to be hosted on a separate machine running a full Windows SQL Server environment. When you upload content to the Planet eStream SVP website, a dedicated Media Convertor service will automatically transcode your content to the required H.264 MP4/ AAC file type. This service can run on a dedicated server if required. Please let your Planet eStream engineer know if you wish to operate either the Media Convertor service or the SQL database on a different machine. For these services to operate across multiple machines it is recommended a domain Service Account is created. This service account should have local administrator rights to the core solution / transcoding server and should have the rights to create databases on the SQL server. Internet access is required during the installation process for downloading of the latest installation media and associated files.
Firewall Considerations The Planet eStream SVP solution operates under a standard set of ports. These will require opening within the local network for the solution to operate successfully; TCP Ports: 80 – Web based features 443 – Web based features if using SSL. (Optional but highly recommended) 1935 – RTMP streaming service 1433 – SQL Server access for additional modules. If your SQL database is located on a different machine than the core website, then the website will need access to the SQL database using this port. 139, 445 – SMB File share access Any relevant ports for LDAP / AD for user authentication. These ports are dependent on your authentication method e.g. Active Directory uses port 3268 for a global catalogue.
UDP Ports: 1434 – SQL Browser 137, 138 – SMB File share access
Should you wish to utilise your Planet eStream SVP externally you only need to open TCP Ports 80, 443 (If SSL is utilised) and 1935 from an external IP addresses. Making your solution externally available is highly recommended and allows you to work hand in hand with an externally available VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) such as Moodle or Firefly.
End User Device Guidance
. Desktop or Laptop Computers Specifications
Windows based PCs accessing the Planet eStream SVP, or being used as Planet eSign players connected to Digital Signage displays, should have a minimum specification equivalent to:
2.00GHz Intel Celeron N2810 Dual Core 4GB RAM 30GB Hard drive 100Mbit Network Interface (We recommend 1Gbit/sec)
. Supported Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows 7 Microsoft Windows 8.1 Microsoft Windows 10
. Supported Web Browsers
Web browsers are required to be HTML5 compliant. These include: Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 Microsoft Edge Google Chrome v51.x or later Mozilla Firefox ESR version 38.8 or later **
. Apple Mac or MacBook
Apple Mac computers should be capable of supporting the Apple Safari web browser Version 8.x or 9.x. The minimum requirement for this is Mac OSX version 10.9 (Maverick)
. Apple Mobile
Apple iPhone and iPad devices should be capable of supporting iOS 9. Apple currently list these devices as:
iPad iPad Pro (12.9-inch) iPad Pro (9.7-inch) iPad Air 2 iPad Air iPad 4th generation iPad 3rd generation iPad 2 iPad mini 4 iPad mini 3 iPad mini 2 iPad mini
iPhone iPhone 6s iPhone 6s Plus iPhone 6 iPhone 6 Plus iPhone SE iPhone 5s iPhone 5c iPhone 5 iPhone 4s
. Android Mobile
Android devices should support Android v4.0 or later.
** Firefox browser supports access to all eStream SVP recorded and on-demand content, but is not currently compatible with playback of Live Broadcast streams over HLS.
The Planet eStream Encoder Application The Planet eStream SVP enables live video capture, streaming and archiving via its encoder application accessible by any authorised user. This application is widely used for lesson and event capture and streaming and also for observational purposes. The Live Encoder Application can be downloaded and installed to suitable PC’s and laptops which meet the specifications below:
Minimum Requirements: . Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz CPU . 4GB Memory . 250GB SATA HDD Boot Disk . DVD+-R/RW . Windows 7 PRO 64 BIT . Keyboard & Mouse . "Fully DirectX10 capable Graphics Card. Example Compatible Graphics Cards: . ATI HD 4000 series and onwards . NVIDIA GT 200 and onwards . NVIDIA Quadro series . INTEL HD 2000 and onwards . Audio Device and Speakers/Headphones
Planet eSign Digital Signage Player Guidance If you intend to use your own hardware platforms rather than our turnkey signage players, then the considerations below should be reviewed.
The Planet eSign Signage Client software has been developed to allow for a client unit to work with the Planet eStream SVP server to provide automated functionality with Planet eSign (Planet eStream’s Digital Signage software). The automated functionality allows for Planet eSign users to control aspects of Digital Signage displays, for example audio levels, remotely. The client software also monitors the Windows O/S to ensure content is displayed uninterrupted where possible and also ensures content is displayed full screen by setting Internet Explorer into Kiosk mode. Along with this and the many types of content that Planet eSign can display, the following minimum specifications and requirements are advised.
Minimum Specifications: . 2.00GHz Intel Celeron N2810 Dual Core . 4GB Ram . Windows 7 . 30GB Hard drive space . 100Mbit Network (Recommend 1Gbit) . Windows 7 . Internet Explorer IE11 . Adobe Flash Player 11.2 . TightVNC – Use the password ‘3S1gn’ . VideoLan VLC Player 2.0.4 (This must have the ActiveX plugin installed for it to work with Internet Explorer)
There are a vast range of mini PC’s available that will work successfully with Planet eSign, we have found that boxes such as Intel NUC, Gigabyte Brix and the Zotac ZBox C-series boxes work well when tested in house. The client must however meet the minimum required specifications as each of the above recommended brands have models that do not.
eSign Client Configuration Guide For Planet eSign to work efficiently and to its full potential, on whichever box you use, we can provide a series of configuration requirements, which is freely available by contacting Planet eStream Support on either 01274 713425 or by emailing [email protected].
The Planet eSign services and application MUST be run as a local administrator. If the client is joined to your domain then please make sure your group policy is not going to overwrite any configuration or users on the client. Please also make sure that your group policy is not set to send sleep commands to the client or turn off hard drives or turn the display off, after set times of inactivity. The client should be set to automatically login as the user running the client.