Forum Discussion
recur_76283
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusLoad Balancing Windows Streaming
Hi,
I have four Windows 2003 Enterprise servers running Windows Media Services all configured for streaming the same content to users on the internet.
I would like to load balance these servers using RTSP or MMS, utilising a layer of web acceleration caches inline to offload streaming load from the target servers.
ie
user - vip - caches - vip - media servers
where each vip is the F5 load balancer VIP for the cache pool or the media server pool respectively.
I think there should be a lot of people out there doing similar to speed up video streaming content and to load balance it properly. However I have been unable to find any F5 references, just references on Foundry, Alteon and Cisco CSM.
Is there anyone here who can assist with this?
- Hello,
Some initial suggestions are:
Least connections (node)
Because of what is likely to be variable session lengths for different types of content, I would suggest setting the load balancing option to least connections (node) this will help better even out the traffic over time.
Health Monitor Tuning
Try a TCP health monitor that may check for the following:
Interval 5
Timeout 16
Manual Resume No
Method GET
Command GetServerStats
Metrics ServerBandwidth:1.5, CPUPercentUsage, MemoryUsage,
TotalClientCount
Agent Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 5.0; Windows NT)
nPath routing
Consider having the BigIP make the load balancing decision but use a nPath routing configuration so that once the balancing decision is made the RTSP traffic is not routed back through the BigIP and is routed directly from the server to internet. This option can be a bit tricky. Take a look at our deployment guide on AskF5 at:
https://tech.f5.com/home/bigip-next/manuals/bigip9_4/bigip9_4implementation/BIG-IP_9_4_Implementation_Gd-03-1.htmlwp1061202
and if you run into issues with the implementation I would suggest you work directly with a support engineer to get up and running. 
recur_76283Thanks James,
Re Direct Server Return, I think I'll have problems enabling this in this firewalled environment.
Are there any implications of snat or NAT in general with RTSP or MMS?- Yeah Direct Server Return can be a bit tricky through firewalls.
There shouldn’t be any implications with SNAT with RSTP or MMS – not that I know of.
We do have a RSTP proxy that is in the works for a future release this year. If you are interested in getting early access and we can take this offline and I can work to get you hooked up.
Cheers - recur_76283Thanks James, it is all configured and operational now.
We created 3 pools for the caches and 3 pools for the servers. Each pool is bound to a VIP for RTSP(TCP 554), MMS (TCP 1755) and HTTP (TCP 80).
Works a treat.
