BigBluebutton cost effective hosting

[sreejiths s]

 Hi  Big Blue Button developers,

 We are looking to implement a solution and are trying to find a cost efficient solution for hosting.

 The solution is mostly one way video, a instructor and the students watching. 

 We have possibly 50 instructors and each has about 50 students.  Seems like a small size structure for now, and we hope t grow the use to 100+ instructors, with 20-50 students     each..

 But the hosting is looking like it's very expensive...  We could really use some help.. we like the looks of Big Blue Button and want to see about using it...

 Can you help us find a cost effective solution for hosting this type of usage?

 Thanks & Regards,

 Sreejith S

[Steve]

I'll defer to the really experienced developers, but my understanding of an economical way to go about this is to use something like Amazon EC2, and then create instances as you need them and destroy them when you don't.  Otherwise, if you set up fixed servers to handle your maximum load, then you're going to be hit with a large monthly bill, with a lot of downtime.  That's my two cents worth.

[Fred Dixon]

> this is to use something like Amazon EC2

See

  https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_install_BigBlueButton_on_EC2?

To get started with running BigBlueButton on EC2.

Regards,... Fred

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[dev0x10]

Have you checked http://www.digitalocean.com? I think they offer a good price for cloud server. 
I'm here not to promote but just give you information  :)

[HostBBB.com]

Sreejith,  you need to design your infrastructure for "peak concurrent use",  if you schedule the teachers across assigned time slots, then you can run multiple BBB servers with load balancing handled simply by your front end applications.

If you don't know when they will hold classes, and it is possible for all 50 instructors to start a class anytime on demand, then you need to deploy a "cluster controller" that can scale instances as needed and turn them down when not in use.

50 instructors with 50 students is 2500 concurrent users if all the classes start at some time.

There are techniques to vertically scale large processors to 48 cores, and distribute video/deskshare over dedicated servers. But this is often dependent on the infrastructure you are using.

Also depending on the geographic location, you may have more options.

Some of the commercial support providers have such solutions.http://bigbluebutton.org/commercial-support/ 

Regards,

Stephen

[sreejiths s]

Thanks very much for that information . :)

[Walter Tak]

In general dedicated servers are not expensive per hour, if you use them the whole month. Amazon is very expensive per hour (don't let the terms 'large' mislead you, those servers are not powerful) and the bandwidth costs are "huge" compared to dedicated server hosters if you make a smart decision.

Basically I see 3 options for companies in general:

1. a cheap dedicated server that you install once and keep renting for a long time (months). You use it occasionally and you never have to "start" it or to remember if you have to shut it down. Bandwidth is often included and resets every month so if you don't overuse your bandwidth-plan your costs are very fixed per month

2. a cheap VPS ; smaller than a dedicated server but often enough to run a normal server. VPSses can be as cheap as 5-10$ a month, a price so low even 1 session for 1 hour for 50 people could already be cost-effective. Let alone having a session per day ; you'd be talking about less than 10/20 = 0.50$ per session with 50 people

3. cloud based 'per hour' systems where you'd invest in a system that can start and shutdown instances on demand. Requires tech and software that is certainly not included with BBB. Basically you want to talk to an admin/engineer with a lot of Amazon EC2 automation knowledge. Each BBB-session would run on a seperate instance that is startup a few minutes before usage and then shutdown when the last person leaves. This can come down to less than 0.20$ per session (for 1 hour) though cumulative bandwidth could start to add more if you are streaming high def video to 50 people in such a session

www.DigitalOcean.com and www.buyvm.net has cheap VPSses ; from $3 to $30 depending on your needs

www.100tb.com has very good dedicated servers with serious amounts of included bandwidth (100 terabyte, per month) ; servers are available from around 200 USD per month

Amazon EC2 is well known ; but the pricing is tricking. In general 20-30 cents per hour of a good instance is not that much, until you run it 24/7 because then that comes to 31 days * 24 hours * 20 cents = 148 USD. That is near a much beefier dedicated server that can host more people.

From experience I know all options are viable. I've done projects with Amazon that were very useful there (especially when your need vary per day/week) , used cheap VPSses (still do) to have low volume sites or projects up to projects with nearly a dozen of those 100tb servers , each brandnew Intel e3-1270 cpus, 16 Gb of memory and the monthly 100 Tb traffic. That is 3 Tb per day or 125 Gigabyte per hour.

Regards,
Walter

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[Moshez]

Walter,

Thanks for the great info.

One question though on option 2 (VPS) you mention the calculation for 50 user session. Based on your experience do you think that the performance of a VPS is good enough for such a session? What are the configuration needed for such a VPS?

Regards,

Moshez

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Moshez,

See also

  https://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#How_many_simultaneous_users_can_BigBlueButton_support

Regards,... Fred

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