WCS in Amazon EC2¶

WCS server can be deployed in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) by one of the following ways:

Setting up Linux virtual machine and installing WCS from the scratch¶

This way is useful if you need fine OS tuning, additional modules installation and so on. Launch a Linux virtual machine by this AWS manual, set it up on your need, then install WCS by quick or detailed installation manual.

WCS automatic deployment from Amazon AWS Marketplace¶

Open Web Call Server page on Amazon AWS Marketplace and click Continue to Subscribe:
Product description page with hourly pricing depending on selected instance will be shown. Click Continue to Configuration:
Server configuration page will be shown. Select region and click Continue to Launch:
Instance launch page will be shown. Select the instance type:
Then scroll page down to Security Group Settings and click Create New Based On Seller Settings:
Security Group creation page will be shown. Set the group name, description and click Save:
Select the new group in the drop-down list:
Click Launch:
A message will be displayed about instance deployment. It takes about a minute
Click on EC2 Console link. Find the launched virtual machine in the Instances section. See the Public DNS column for the host name
Open WCS server web interface https://host.amazonaws.com:8888 in your browser and accept security exception. Use the Instance ID of the launched virtual machine as the administrator password:
Check WebRTC streaming from web camera and playing the stream using Two-way Streaming web example:

WCS deployment from AWS Marketplace image with custom settings¶

AWS Marketplace image contains only basic WCS settings. To customize the server, it is necessary to connect to the instance via SSH and restart WCS. However, to get ready to launch server "out of the box", it is possible to set up user script to reconfigure the server during the first start. This can be useful, for example, to deploy autoscaling group.

In EC2 Console go to Instances - Instances section and click Launch instance
Choose Marketplace AMI "Web Call Server" using search string
Review AMI information
Choose instance type
Scroll down Configure Instance Details page to the end and insert custom update and setup script to User data text box

See the example script below
Configure security group. By default, the security group will be created from AMI settings. Add the necessary ports
Click Review and Launch. If all the parameters are correct, click Launch

Server instance will be launched
Open WCS web interface, publish test stream in Two Way Streaming example and play it

The setup script example to update WCS to latest build and to configure Origin server for WebRTC and RTMP streams publishing

Origin setup script

#!/bin/bash

# Stop WCS before reconfiguring
PID="$(pgrep -f 'com.flashphoner.server.Server' | grep -v bash)"
if [ -n "$PID" ]; then
   service webcallserver stop
fi

# Update WCS to the latest build (optionally, set to false if you don't)
UPDATE=true
if $UPDATE; then
   cd /tmp
   wget --timeout=10 --no-check-certificate https://flashphoner.com/download-wcs5.2-server.tar.gz -O wcs5-server.tar.gz
   if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
       mkdir -p FlashphonerWebCallServer-5.2-latest && tar xzf wcs5-server.tar.gz -C FlashphonerWebCallServer-5.2-latest --strip-components 1
       cd FlashphonerWebCallServer-5.2-latest
       chmod +x install.sh
       ./install.sh -silent
       cd ..
       rm -rf FlashphonerWebCallServer-5.2-latest wcs5-server.tar.gz
   fi
fi

# Configuration setup
WCS_CONFIG=/usr/local/FlashphonerWebCallServer/conf/flashphoner.properties
JVM_CONFIG=/usr/local/FlashphonerWebCallServer/conf/wcs-core.properties

#CDN settings
CDN_ROLE=origin
CDN_IP=0.0.0.0
echo -e "\ncdn_enabled=true" >> $WCS_CONFIG
echo -e "\ncdn_ip=$CDN_IP" >> $WCS_CONFIG
echo -e "\ncdn_role=$CDN_ROLE" >> $WCS_CONFIG
echo -e "\ncdn_nodes_resolve_ip=false" >> $WCS_CONFIG

# Request keyframes from WebRTC publishers every 5 seconds
echo -e "\nperiodic_fir_request=true" >> $WCS_CONFIG

# Disable RTMP keepalives to publish from OBS
echo -e "\nkeep_alive.enabled=websocket,rtmfp" >> $WCS_CONFIG

# Configure heap settings
HEAP_SIZE=512m
sed -i -e "s/^\(-Xmx\).*\$/\1$HEAP_SIZE/" $JVM_CONFIG

# Start WCS after reconfiguring
PID="$(pgrep -f 'com.flashphoner.server.Server' | grep -v bash)"
if [ -n "$PID" ]; then
   service webcallserver restart
else
   service webcallserver start
fi

# Disable internal firewall, ports are allowed/blocked on security group level
iptables -F

Known issues¶

1. After migration to Amazon Linux 2 AMI as basic image, systemd is used for services management¶

Symptoms

The command

sudo service webcallserver start

returns

Redirecting to /bin/systemctl start webcallserver.service

the command

sudo service webcallserver check_update

does not work

Solution

a) use systemctl to start, stop, restart WCS

sudo systemctl start webcallserver
sudo systemctl stop webcallserver
sudo systemctl restart webcallserver

b) use webcallserver script to check updates

cd /usr/local/FlashphonerWebCallServer/bin
sudo ./webcallserver check_update
sudo ./webcallserver update