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

1. Open Web Call Server page on Amazon AWS Marketplace and click Continue to Subscribe:
   

2. Product description page with hourly pricing depending on selected instance will be shown. Click Continue to Configuration:
   

3. Server configuration page will be shown. Select region and click Continue to Launch:
   

4. Instance launch page will be shown. Select the instance type:
   

5. Then scroll page down to Security Group Settings and click Create New Based On Seller Settings:

6. Security Group creation page will be shown. Set the group name, description and click Save:

7. Select the new group in the drop-down list:
   

8. Click Launch:
   

9. A message will be displayed about instance deployment. It takes about a minute
   

10. Click on EC2 Console link. Find the launched virtual machine in the Instances section. See the Public DNS column for the host name
    

11. 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:
    

12. 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.

1. In EC2 Console go to Instances - Instances section and click Launch instance
   

2. Choose Marketplace AMI "Web Call Server" using search string
   

3. Review AMI information
   

4. Choose instance type
   

5. Scroll down Configure Instance Details page to the end and insert custom update and setup script to User data text box
   
   The setup script example to update WCS to latest build and to configure Origin server for WebRTC and RTMP streams publishing
   ??? example "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
   

6. Configure security group. By default, the security group will be created from AMI settings. Add the necessary ports
   

7. Click Review and Launch. If all the parameters are correct, click Launch
   
   Server instance will be launched
   

8. Open WCS web interface, publish test stream in Two Way Streaming example and play it
   

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