Installation guide
Server healthcheck utility
Feature in Flash Media Streaming Server and Flash Media Interactive Server; requires
Windows or Linux.
InadditiontotheAdministrationConsoleandserverlogs,youcanuseFMSChecktohelp
evaluate the overall health of Flash Media Server. FMSCheck is a command-line utility program
that diagnoses and determines server status. e tool is installed with Flash Media Server and is
availableforbothWindowsandLinux.Asacommand-lineutility,itcaneasilybeintegrated
with your back-end monitoring systems.
FMSCheck provides information such as whether the server is running, what the response time is,
andwhichcoreprocessesorapplicationsarenotresponding.Itcanalsocheckeveryactive
instance of every application currently running on the server to be sure each one is accepting
connections as expected.
FMSCheckcansavetheFlashMediaServeradministratorthesignicanttimeandeortittakesto
manually check applications and streams. Test connections can be run in parallel or staggered,
depending on the desired test.
Video validation utility
Feature in Flash Media Streaming Server and Flash Media Interactive Server; requires
Windows or Linux; no Flash Player.
With the large number of encoding technologies able to convert video into a Flash Player
compatible format, inconsistencies in video encoding can occur. e FLVCheckcommand-line
tool lets you validate if a particular video can be streamed from Flash Media Server and whether
it is corrupted or encoded with missing information.
FLVCheckvalidatesbothFLVandMPEG-4les.Itchecksthedatastructure,includingthe
headers,timestamps,andmetadata.YoucanwritescriptsoruseFLVCheckinanautomated
environment.ForFLVles(On2andSorensoncodecs),thetoolxesminorerrorstomakesure
that the les run or that they do not corrupt the server.
Scaling Flash Media Server 3.5
Servers have a nite capacity, so as trac and throughput increases, applications need to be
scaled to preserve quality of service. Flash Media Server oers several exible options for
graceful scaling of high-trac applications.
Cluster deployment
Feature in Flash Media Streaming Server and Flash Media Interactive Server; requires Flash Player
6 or later.
You can deploy multiple servers behind a load balancer to distribute the application load evenly.
Flash Media Server clustering enables you to scale an application to accommodate more clients
reliably.Youcanalsocreateredundancy,whicheliminatessinglepointsoffailure.Clusteringis
generallybestforliveorVODstreaming,whereclientsdonotneedtocommunicatewitheach
otherfromwithinspecicapplicationinstances.ClusteringcanbeachievedusingeitherFlash
MediaStreamingServerorFlashMediaInteractiveServer.
Flash Media Server intelligent balancing
Feature in Flash Media Interactive Server; requires Flash Player 6 or later.
WiththeFlashMediaInteractiveServer,youcanintelligentlydirecttractoamultipleserver
cluster using server-side scripting. is option would typically be used for multiway
communication applications that require connections to be routed to a specic server. is option
does require development of rather sophisticated server-side ActionScript to manage connections.
46