Rat između Apple-a i Adobe-a oko dostupnosti flasha na iOs platformi ima svoju podužu genezu, a sve je počelo s mogučnošću flasha da generira nativne iOs igre i aplikacije. Nakon toga je uslijedila zabrana distribucije takvih aplikacije sa strane Apple-a tepismom Steve Jobsa developerskoj (web/mobile) zajednici. Vjerovatno i bez klikanja znate kakav je ton tog pisma…

Nakon prepucavanja dviju kompanija uslijedio je “normalniji” razvoj događaja gdje je Apple ipak dozvolio da flasheri proizvode nativne iOs aplikacije, a Adobe je okrenuo novu stranicu sa svojim Flash Media Serverom, tj. njegovom verzijom 4.5.

Ta nova verzija servera je posebna najviše po tome što omogućuje paralelni prikaz flash live streaming videa na svim iOs uređajima, a čiji sneak peak možete vidjeti u cool videu…

Od ostalih dodanih pogodnosti treba izdvojiti…

• Digital Rights Management uz pomoć Flash Access 3.0 platforme - pomaže Vam da kontrolirate pristup Vašem originalnom sadržaju te omogućite granularni pristup različitm vrstama korisnika

• DVR i pauziranje živog prijenosa - korisnici imaju mogućnost pauzirati prijenos uživo te preskočiti dio snimke sa time-shifting tehnologijom

• Dinamički streaming - pruža gledatelju optimizaranu verziju videa na temelju dostupne internet veze. To bi značilo da korisnik ne mora imati superbrzi ADSL da bi mogao pratiti Vaš live streaming. Dovoljno je odrediti najmanji zahtjevani video bitrate (recimo 300 Kbps) te će server distribuirati taj video korisnicima sa nižom brzinom internet veze. Ostalima automatski te paralelno isporučuje Full HD video ako je to moguće

Pogledajte sve detalje u opširnom PDF-u

Ukoliko Vas je možda prepala visoka cijena ovog proizvoda, napominjemo kako postoji i cloud verzija na Amazon Web services platformi, a cijena korištenja instance po satu počinje od 0,44$ pa u principu … što čekate ;)

P.S. a kako to rade veliki momci…

 

Today we will front two similar guys in cloud storage space: Rackspace CloudFiles & Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

These prominent players have been with us for quite some time now and have been serving our static HTTP requests with more than just a smile. Amazon did start earlier but we cannot bypass Rackspace which is famous for its fanatical support and general hosting experience.

CONCEPT & PHILOSOPHY

Both services are basically cloud storage services and act as giant hard disk where you can upload your files for instant or later use. These services are ideal for serving static content (video, photo, audio, documents) and you don’t have to worry about server storage limits, backup and redundancy, also they reside somewhere between PaaS and IaaS layer of cloud technology…so let the show-off begin…

INFRASTRUCTURE

AWS has built impressive array of datacanters around the globe and right now has presence in 19 cities accross three different continents…

On the other hand, Rackspace has teamed up with Akamai which is traditionaly considered a leader in web infrastructure. These guys have around 86.000 servers and have done projects like live streaming to 700.000 YouTube users or delivering 20% of overall web traffic. See the video for detailed visualization.

Some tests on CDN speeds have favoured Cloudfront over Akamai but we have also pulled some internal tests on large data files (video / audio) and have come to conclusion that it is the other way around i.e. Akami wins. You can test the CDN online by yourself to check the scores but we will vote for Rackspace/Akami in this round.

FEATURES

Amazon was the pioneer in cloud storage space and unfortunately for RackSpace, AWS position stays rock solid in features area. AWS has Multi user fragmentation options, large data import/export plans, reduced redundancy options, region storage selection, versioning…just to name a few. Rackspace is once again better in customer support and OpenStack policy which is generally a good thing, but features points go to AWS this time.

One thing that excells in AWS is the option to do native CDN streaming via RTMP and this is the killer functionality that puts the large victory for AWS in this round.

INTEGRATION WITH OTHER SERVICES / 3rd party apps

Being first in the field means that developers had time to develop on top of your platform. This rule has proven right as S3 has been the platform storage layer for top-notch apps like Dropbox, Twitter and JungleDisk (which also supoorts CloudFiles now) just to name a few making the S3 ecosystem large, important and scalable.

As for the tools for managing S3 or Cloudfiles … AWS S3 is a clear winner with over 35 apps that let you manage S3 accountswith partial or all functionality.

SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT – SLA

a. AWS - AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon S3 available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle (the “Service Commitment”). In the event Amazon S3 does not meet the Service Commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.

Service Credits are calculated as a percentage of the total charges paid by you for Amazon S3 for the billing cycle in which the error occurred in accordance with the schedule below.

Designed to provide 99.99% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year. This durability level corresponds to an average annual expected loss of 0.01% of objects.Designed to sustain the loss of data in a single facility.

b. CloudFiles - CloudFiles SLA is very similar to S3 but has the major advantage in returning credits if they fail to meet the required uptime. Credit amount can go to 100% as you see in the SLA picture bellow

With the credits in mind we give this round to RackSpace making the score once again even!

CDN INTEGRATION

CDN integration is becoming more and more important as your website/service grows and you need to serve static content that is close to your user. This round generally resides in first section but we decided to give it a separate round as from our perspective your users are the ones that will use your service and CDN is a big part of the experience. RackSpace CloudFiles have native integration with Akamai (before it was LimeLight) and you don’t need to do any extra work for enabling it. AWS has more complicated CDN solution as you need to sign-up for CloudFront, setup distributions and make extra payments. One more important thing for AWS…it supports CDN RTMP streaming of your media files. Super cool but we will give this round points for CloudFiles as they really got this part of it right without extra hassle. AWS CDN is more powerful in functionality but we gave them points for functionality allready so…

API SUPPORT / LIBRARIES / DEVELOPMENT + .NET C sharp examples

CloudFiles has an ReSTful API with a clear and concise developers guide. It also support client libraries built in Java, PHP, .NET, Python & Ruby making development on top of their platform layer extra easy.

using com.mosso.cloudfiles;
using com.mosso.cloudfiles.domain;

public class processImage : IHttpHandler
{
public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context)
{
UserCredentials uc = new UserCredentials("mossoUID", "mossoKEY");
Connection cn = new Connection(uc);

cn.PutStorageItem("mossoImageContainer", "c:\\CoolFileImage.jpg");
}
}

While CloudFiles support for their API and libraries is enough for any type of development it cannot match AWS API for S3 and their libraries, articles, forums, FAQ, discussion boards and more. AWS supports their own official libraries as well as customer libraries for development which are in a fair stable releases.

using Amazon.S3;
using Amazon.S3.Model;
using Amazon.S3.Transfer;
using Amazon.S3.Util;

public class imageHandler : IHttpHandler
{
public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context)
{
  AmazonS3Config s3config = new AmazonS3Config();
  s3config.UseSecureStringForAwsSecretKey = false;

  AmazonS3Client s3client = new AmazonS3Client("AKID", "SECRET_KEY", s3config);

  PutObjectRequest poReq = new PutObjectRequest();
  poReq.BucketName = "Bucket_Name";
  poReq.FilePath = "c:\\CoolFileImage.jpg";
  poReq.Key = "DESIRED_FILE_NAME";
  poReq.CannedACL = S3CannedACL.PublicRead;
  PutObjectResponse poResp = s3client.PutObject(poReq);
  }
}

Also, having the AWS management console is a superb way for managing your development resources in an easy/GUI way.

SUPPORT / CUSTOMER SERVICE

Support is something you need to pay for at AWS. Making this test a little unfair as Rackspace has native fanatical support included in the CloudFiles pricing. As for the quality of the service….Rackspace is known for their support and we as a company can back it up as we use it on a daily basis. Live chat, emails, forums, ticketing, phone calls 24/7…all is included.

AWS has multi-tier support from Bronze to Platinum packages but for instance their fastest guaranteed response is 15 minutes as Rackspace pushes it to one minute in every situation via Live Chat. Also note that Rackspace has greater experience in general hosting as a company and can provide with insights for various not-cloud fields.

PRICING

Pricing is the most important part of this duel and we all know that, but is it simple? Not quite as the services are not 100% similar. One thing that complicates the duel is support which Rackspace includes in the pricing and also the CDN integration which with RackSpace is also native. Advantages of AWS is a free tier of 5 GB of data and 15 GB of bandwith which Rackspace does not support. Here are all the details

AWS

CloudFiles

We will give this round to S3 as they are generally cheaper with a free tier for new users making a close tie between contenders…

Our reccomendation: If you need fast, lightweight and easy access to CDN or Cloud storage then go for CloudFiles as they are easier to setup. Costs are generally lower in the long run. If you are a developer and building a scalable app then go for the S3 solution as it is much powerful and feature based.

Koliko je prošlo sekundi od trenutka Vašeg klika pa do učitavanja ove stranice?

Već ste nakon par sekundi bili malo nervozni, a pogotovo jer na drugom tabu imate otvoren fejs s chatom, spreadsheet od Google appsa te najnovije vijesti s Vašeg omiljenog hipsterskog-portala. Očekujete od tih svih tabova i stranica da uvijek rade, trenutno prikazuju sadržaj te nikad ne zastajkuju.

Ovi navedeni “zahtjevi” se kod facebooka uzimaju zdravo za gotovo-pogotovo ako uzmemo u obzir da najveća socijalna mreža opslužuje širok demografski raspon tj. nije čudno da Vam mama pošalje zahtjev za prijateljstvo, a takvu publiku ne zanima zašto im chat zastajkuje ili se za učitavanje inboxa troši više od par sekundi. Ok, geek u Vama će odmah skočiti te izjaviti da je dužnost svakog poslovanja i platforme “omogućavanje nesmetanog korištenja vlastitog proizvoda ili usluge” no radi li se ovdje zaista o tipičnoj usluzi? Prisjetimo se…

- facebook opslužuje već više od 600 milijuna korisnika (pomnožimo 150 sa “Hrvatska”)
- ti korisnici generiraju oko 600 milijardi pageviewsa mjesečno (1000 pageviews / user / month)
- svaki mjesec se uploada 3 milijarde fotografija
- facebook sustav isporučuje 1.2 milijuna fotografija svake sekunde
- preko platforme se pošalje više od 25 milijardi poruka (status, poruka, komentara…)
- neki analitičari kažu da facebook ima već više od 50.000 servera

Dakle, “not-your-average-Joe” ako pričamo o web aplikacijama i razina tehnologije koju većina od nas vjerojatno neće sresti na svom IT-karijernom putu. No to nas neće spriječiti da dublje zavirimo pod haubu ovog tehnološkog čuda. U članku ćemo opisati neke od slojeva i modula facebook arhitekture…

Osnovni aplikativni sloj
Osnovna tehnologija koja se koristi je LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) no uz veliki broj preinaka i custom razvijenih plug-inova. Recimo, prilagođeni PHP komapajler je napisan direktno od strane facebooka kako bi se izvšavao “nativno” na fb serverima. Linux distribucija je prilagođena za veći mrežni protok, a MySQL instance služe uglavnom za konzistentno spremanje “key-value” parova transferirajući JOIN-ove te veze prema web serverima pošto je tamo lakše raditi optimalizaciju (hint: Memcached…)

MemCached

Memcached je jedna od poznatijih tehnologija kod velikih web sjedišta, a služi kao memorijski sloj između web servera i MySQL baze podataka pošto je pristup istoj relativno spor. Facebookov Memcache se vrti na tisućama servera te isporučuje desetine terabyte-a podataka svakodnevno čineći ovo jednu od največih memorijskih instalacija na svijetu.

BigPipe
BigPipe je interesantan modul koji služi za dinamičko te parcijalno isporučivanje web stranica, a čini to kroz tzv. “Pagelets”. Recimo chat prozor je jedan “pagelet”, stream vijesti je drugi itd. Svaki od njih se kompajlira te isporučuje odvojeno.

Varnish

Varnish je HTTP akcelerator koji služi kao vrsta load-balancera. Facebook ga koristi kod posluživanja profilnih slika te dnevno obrađuje više milijardi upita.

Thrift
Facebook koristi više vrsta jezika za različite servise. PHP se koristi za prezentacijski dio, Erlang se koristi za chat, Java i C++ za druge servise…Thrift povezuje sve te programske jezike kroz svoj framework te omogućuje razvojnom timu upotrebu raznih jezika pri raznovrsnim potrebama.

HipHop for PHP

PHP je relativno spor zbog svoje “skriptne” prirode, a pogotovo ako ga se uspoređuje sa nativnim jezikom web servera. HipHopstoga konvertira PHP kod u C++ koji se potom kompajlira pružajući bolje performanse. Tim stručnjaka (3) je radio na HipHopu 18 mjeseci unutar facebooka prije nego što je modul izašao u Live produkciju.

HayStack
Haystack je facebookov sustav za pohranu/dohvaćanje objekata, no najviše ga koriste za fotografije, njih 80 milijardi! :)

Cassandra

Cassandra je distribuirani sustav za pohranu bez točke prekida rada. Također, Cassandra je pokazni projekt NoSQL pokreta, a odnedavno je članica Apache skupine projekata. Facebook koristi Cassandru kod pretraživanja poruka tj. inboxa.

Scribe
Scribe je fleksibilan te skalabilan logging sustav prilagođen za rad na facebooku te automatski dodaje nove logging kategorije kojih facebook ima već više od stotinu.

Hadoop & Hive

Hadoop je Map-Reduce implementacija koja omogućuje velik broj kalkulacija i obrađivanja golih podataka. Ukoliko ste primjetili da Vam se na streamu vijesti pojavljuju samo bliski prijatelji, to je vjerojatno zato jer je tu kalkulaciju na temelju vaših klikova napravio Hadoop. Hive se koristi pri dohvačanju obrađenih podataka i to u SQL stilu. I Hadoop i Hive su open-source (Apache) projekti te ih koriste ostale velike stranice poput Twittera ili Yahoo-a.

Serveri & Datacentri (Hardware)
Facebook je odnedavno stavio svo svoje znanje oko slaganja servera te podatkovnih centara na javno raspolaganje. Projekt je dobio naziv Open Compute project, a pridružili su mu se i drugi “hardware provideri”… Dell, HP, Rackspace, AMD, Intel, Quanta. Više o samom projektu možete pogledati na priloženom videu.

 

Upravljanje
Facebook ima sustav kojeg zovu “GateKeeper”, a on im omogućuje da puštaju određene promjene određenim korisnicima, rade “A/B testiranja”, testiraju promjene samo preko zaposlenika. “Crna lansiranja” se rade na način da se određene preinake puštaju u rad bez promjene na korisničkom sučelju. Samim time se mogu rano otkriti razni software bugovi te greške na razini aplikacije ili baze podataka. Crna lansiranja se rade dva tjedna prije službenog lansiranja novog fb “fičra”.

Monitoring facebooka se odvija na razini svake PHP funkcije. Alat koji to omogućava se zove XHProf. Ukoliko se detektira velika latencija ili greška, dio facebooka se može ugasiti ili degradirati kako bi korisnici mogli pristupiti osnovnim funkcionalnostima. Upravo ovo je pokazatelj koliko je facebook tehnološki napredan te koliko zapravo brine o User-eXperience-u.

Nadamo se da Vam je članak bio informativan, a ukoliko mislite da smo išta izostavili slobodno nam pišite ili komentirajte. Izvor ovih podataka je uglavnom developerski blog facebook inženjera. Lajkajte ih :)

EPH (Jutarnji) u suradnji s partnerima pokreće novi multimedijalni / video web projekt - WPN.TV. Predstavljanje je održano na Windaysima te je sama platforma bila otvorena za posjetitelje par dana radi dobivanja feedbacka te komentara.

Radi se o projektu koji omogućava gledanje TV programa i isječaka preko Interneta, a s obzirom da su u njega uključeni brojni atraktivni partneri, možemo reći da će domaći Internet biti obogaćen za značajnu količinu video-sadržaja tenove mogućnosti interaktivnog oglašavanja, prijenosa u uživo te Pay-Per-View opcija

Platforma je podijeljena na kanale, a u beta razdoblju možemo gledati KlasikTV, MTV, CMC, JutarnjiTV, Transmeet.Tv, Xstream, DSLR kanal i Fashion.hr.

Pravi start usluge očekuje se uskoro, a naša Transmeet.Tv će zasigurno maksimalno podržati novu platformu u nastojanjima da obogati domaću video scenu. Također, na samom kanalu će se pratiti zbivanja sa urbane scene putem MusicMap.Eu widgeta te pokoji Live streaming iznenađenja…no otom-potom.

Izvor: Bug