Adobe Media Server 5.0 offers media publishers some new ways to deliver on-demand video and music to iOS devices through Apple's HTTP Live Streaming. This means that using AMS 5.0, you can publish Adobe HDS live, Apple HLS live, Adobe HDS on-demand with just-in-time packaging, and Apple HLS on-demand.

These are the steps required to install Adobe Media Server 5.0 on AWS EC2. This is a self-managed solution. If you want a fully-managed solution, try Orbitera's package which will cost around $400/month.

Technology Stack

There's a lot going on here so let's first itemize the tools we'll be using beforehand:

  • Adobe Media Sever with Apache 2.2
  • AWS EC2
    • 3.2GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor (dual Intel Xeon® or faster recommended)
    • 8Gb RAM
  • AWS S3
  • AWS IAM

Here's a list of recommended EC2 machines for AMS.

Step 1 - Create an S3 Bucket

Visit the S3 Console to create a bucket for your private media.

I will call my bucket "my-media-bucket".

Step 2 - Create an IAM User w/ bucket permissions

You will need an IAM user to mount buckets to your server.

  • Visit IAM Console
  • Create a new user with "programmatic access only".
  • Add this policy file to user.
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:Get*",
                "s3:List*"
            ],
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-media-bucket*"
        }
    ]
}

Step 3 - Managing Firewalls

AWS's Firewalls are managed through Security Groups. The security group Adobe recommends includes one unique port numbered 1935.

TYPE   | Protocol | Port Range | Source
HTTP   | TCP      | 80         | 0.0.0.0/0
CUSTOM | TCP      | 1935       | 0.0.0.0/0
CUSTOM | UDP      | 1935       | 0.0.0.0/0
SSH    | TCP      | 22         | 0.0.0.0/0
HTTPS  | TCP      | 443        | 0.0.0.0/0

Port 1935 is specifically used for RTMP protocol and we won't be needing this but it's how Adobe delivers Flash video.

Step 4 - Launch an EC2 Instance

Note: Adobe Media Server on Amazon Web Services does not support Spot Instances or Virtual Private Clouds (VPC).

Find a CentOS package that is close to this:

  • AWS Marketplace > CentOS 7 (x86_64) - with Updates HVM
  • General Purpose + t2.large
  • 8GB of RAM

While creating your new EC2 instance, you can create special scripts that will help you automate your computer's reboot.

Add this script to User Data.

#! /bin/sh 
###########################################
# Objective: 
# Mount a private S3 bucket full of media.
# This project will mount buckets from S3 into the FMS/AWS server and copy them over during a reboot.
###########################################

S3FS=/usr/local/bin/s3fs
FMS_DIRECTORY=/mnt/webroot/vod/audio
AMS_DIRECTORY=/opt/adobe/ams/webroot/vod/audio
PASSWORD_ENV_VAR=/etc/passwd-s3fs

#Get your public and private access keys and place them in a special passwords file
echo "USERNAME-IAM-ACCESS-KEY-A:PASSWORD-IAM-ACCESS-SECRET" >>  ${PASSWORD_ENV_VAR}

#Set the permissions of the passwords file
chmod 640 ${PASSWORD_ENV_VAR}

#Create a new Audio Directory within the video on demand folder
rm -rf ${FMS_DIRECTORY}
mkdir ${FMS_DIRECTORY}
#Set the permisisons
chmod -R 667 ${FMS_DIRECTORY}

###########################################
# App Specific Info
###########################################
S3_BUCKET=my-media-bucket
MUSIC_S3_MOUNT=/mnt/s3-bucket-music

#Create a new directory where your s3bucket will mount
rf -rf ${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}
mkdir ${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}

#Mount the S3 bucket to your new directory. I like to name them the same thing to keep things organized

#The reason you put it in the /mnt directory is because it has the most alloted disk space
${S3FS} ${S3_BUCKET} -o use_cache=/tmp -o allow_other,uid=500,gid=500 ${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}

#Run any special shell scripts. This is where I run my cp /* files Webroot directory
chmod 777 ${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}/setup.sh
${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}/setup.sh
#Copy files from the bucket
cp -v ${MUSIC_S3_MOUNT}/* ${FMS_DIRECTORY}

Source Pg. 36 of this PDF.

Step 5 - Configure CentOS

How to log into your EC2 instance.

ssh -i /path/to/file.pem centos@ec2-xx-xxx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com

Once you've logged in, switch over to Super User.

sudo su

Install Fuse and Fuse Develop.

yum remove fuse s3fs

Before you can mount a bucket, you need to install these packages:

yum install gcc libstdc++-devel gcc-c++ curl-devel libxml2-devel mailcap openssl-devel fuse fuse-devel

Configure s3fs with your access key. Paste your access key from Step 1.

echo "USERNAME-IAM-ACCESS-KEY-A:PASSWORD-IAM-ACCESS-SECRET" >>  /etc/passwd-s3fs

Make sure the password key has proper permissions:

chmod 600 /etc/passwd-s3fs

Step 6 - Install Fuse + S3FS

Before mounting the S3 bucket to an EC2 instance, you first need to install two tools: Fuse and S3Fs. You need Fuse before you can install s3fs.

Install Fuse 2.9.7. There may be a newer release but I can guarantee this one works. Please enter each command one by one.

cd /usr/local/src
wget https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse/releases/download/fuse-2.9.7/fuse-2.9.7.tar.gz
tar -xzvf fuse-2.9.7.tar.gz
rm -f fuse-2.9.7.tar.gz
mv fuse-2.9.7 fuse
cd fuse/
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib64/pkgconfig/
ldconfig

Double check your Fuse install.

pkg-config --modversion fuse

S3FS is the actual tool that does the mounting.

yum install automake wget git 
git automake
git clone https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse
cd s3fs-fuse/
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr --with-openssl # See (*1)
make
sudo make install

Double check your s3fs:

s3fs --version

Step 7 - MOUNT S3 Bucket

Mount in Debug mode

s3fs my-bucket /path/to/mountpoint -o passwd_file=/etc/passwd-s3fs -o dbglevel=info -f -o curldbg

Step 8 - Install AMS 5.0

Go to the tmp directory.

cd /tmp
wget 
tar -xzvf AdobeMediaServer_5_LS1_linux64.tar.gz
cd AMS_5_0_6_r6102
./installAMS

Step 9 - Recap

If you want to deliver files via HTTP (port 80), this is where you will want to store your media files.

cd /opt/adobe/ams/webroot/vod

Once you store the files there, you have three different ways to access the data.

Method 1 - HTTP Stream (Basic)

If you have an Mp3 file, this is the URL path.

http://xx.xx.xx.xx/vod/file.mp3

Method 2 - HTTP Dynamic Stream (Android)

If you want to unlock HTTP Dynamic streaming, then you'll first modify the directory path to /hds-vod and append an extra extension of f4m to the file.

http://xx.xx.xx.xx/hds-vod/file.f4v.f4m

Method 3 - HTTP Live Stream (iOS)

If you want to unlock HTTP Live streaming, then you'll want to modify the directory pat to /hls-vod and append m3u8.

http://xx.xx.xx.xx/hls-vod/file.mp4.m3u8

Step 9 - Visit Admin Console

If you want to see the Administrative console on Adobe Media Server, here's the URL.

http://localhost/ams_adminConsole.htm

File Structure

  • AMS Config Files /opt/adobe/ams/conf
  • Logs /mnt/logs
  • Apache Configuration /opt/adobe/ams/Apache2.2/
  • Apache Webroot directory /opt/adobe/ams/webroot/vod
  • Flash Applications /mnt/applications

Resources

Adobe Notes

Mounting an S3 Bucket

You'll need to learn how to install fuse and s3fs before you can mount an S3 bucket to the media server.

Preparing Media for iOS

APACHE

Digital Rights Management

Flash Client Players