EC2 AMI's
SuperDuG
http://alestic.com/ ubuntu 10.04 LTS AMI as the base.
I was wondering if there was any interest in "washing" this instance
and creating a public AMI for launching BBB on EC2?
It'd be similar to the way the virtual machine works and allow people
to load up a server relatively easily and inexpensively. Right now
I'm running a single room instance for about 25 people on an m1.small
32-bit spot instance. There's no lag and it runs quite well for about
3 cents an hour.
The washing process would be removing my personal API Hash and giving
some basic instructions as to what would need to be configured to make
everything work. I'd also make a 64-bit version for those of you
wanting/needing a little more horsepower than a c1.medium (largest 32-
bit instance on EC2).
You could then build from this framework as your own, or just simply
launch a server from that point. While installing BBB from
repositories is rather trivial, I know that getting everything setup
and working is not as easy for those not familiar with linux in
general. It would be an EBS boot instance, allowing you to create a
snapshot and save the instance as your own AMI (very trivial to do as
well).
Obviously I will rely on the BBB community for questions and answers
(and I will answer questions there as well) which is why I'm posing
the question to the dev list.
I'm also willing to cover the AMI hosting costs for the image as well
(it's pretty cheap).
Thanks,
Doug
Fred Dixon
While it's pretty easy to install BigBlueButton on EC2 from scratch
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#Can_I_install_BigBlueButton_on_EC2?
we figured it was only a matter of time before folks starting putting
together AMIs. We're very familiar with EC2 and use it quite
frequently for testing BigBlueButton. The site
http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/
has been running on a c1.medium instance for months.
> There's no lag and it runs quite well for about
> 3 cents an hour.
You might be thinking of a t1.micro which is $0.02/hour plus an
elastic IP which is $.01/hour. The m1.small starts at $0.085/hour.
For more information on pricing see
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Regards,... Fred
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SuperDuG
servers.
http://cloudexchange.org/charts/us-east-1.linux.m1.small.html
They jumped to 0.06 last thursday, but statistically, you should be
able to run a spot instance for as long as you want if you bid $0.085
(price of on-demand instance).
And pay an average of 0.031 an hour. Having an AMI means that
launching the instances would be an API call or a few clicks in the
management console.
It's a reserved instance without the upfront cost and possibility that
you may have your instance terminated.
I used to do spot instances and had the installation of BBB automated
via another dedicated server in ec2, but the AMI should make deploying
much simpler.
I think the t1.micros can't even load BBB successfully, or at least
haven't been able to in my experience.
It's the cheapest way I've found to run BBB.
On Jul 17, 10:22 am, Fred Dixon <ffdi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi SuperDuG,
>
> While it's pretty easy to install BigBlueButton on EC2 from scratch
>
> we figured it was only a matter of time before folks starting putting
> together AMIs. We're very familiar with EC2 and use it quite
> frequently for testing BigBlueButton. The site
>
> http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/
>
> has been running on a c1.medium instance for months.
>
> > There's no lag and it runs quite well for about
> > 3 cents an hour.
>
> You might be thinking of a t1.micro which is $0.02/hour plus an
> elastic IP which is $.01/hour. The m1.small starts at $0.085/hour.
> For more information on pricing see
>
> http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
>
> Regards,... Fred
> > I've created a private AMI for Amazon's EC2 service utilizing the
Denis Zgonjanin
That's a great idea. I need a BBB AMI. I was going to create it myself
soon, but if you already have it nearly done, that would save me quite
a bit of time.
- Denis
> > > I've created a private AMI for Amazon's EC2 service utilizing the
Doug "SuperDuG" Smith
have a test version out sometime early this week.
HostBBB.com
and Asia.... they work great for conferences < 50 users.
few things to note..... i always use the latest official ubuntu 32
bit listed on alestic.com. and issue the same 8 commands to build a
server (thanks to fred's great packaging!).
If you use the 32bit.... you can go from a standard (small) to hi-
cpu (medium) instance as needed in about 2 minutes. giving you
ability to increase or decrease based on current needed. This wont
work on the 64bit instances.
Also on pricing.... you can reduce the costs by about 50% if you buy 3
yr reserved instances, with the ROI being about 6 months on your
investment,
Lastly, using the EBS volumes allow you to idle and instance when not
in use... and it only costs 24 cents a day to keep the elastic IP
assigned, restarting the instance just requires you modify
sip.properties with the new 10.x.x.x ip assigned to the instance and
running bbb-conf --clean. (This is one area that automation by passing
userdata on invoke can automate)
regards,
Stephen
On Jul 17, 8:20 pm, "Doug \"SuperDuG\" Smith" <super...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> > > I've created a private AMI for Amazon's EC2 service utilizing the
Doug "SuperDuG" Smith
Thankfully amazon let me know that I had forgotten to remove a few
account specific things (like the authorized private SSH keys). I
also found this document.
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/0155828273219400
In my defense, I've never setup a public AMI before, so this is a
learning experience for myself as well. I guess I should have been a
little more observant of the instance specific security concerns
instead of only the BBB specific ones.
I'm going to rebuild again, but I'm not sure if I'll get to them
tonight, they will be here shortly though.
I guess I should also make sure to mention the setup. These will use
an 8GB EBS store (the same as the ubuntu from alestic's LTS AMI). I
am configuring BBB with Asterisk, but conversion to freeswitch should
be simple enough if that's how you want to deploy. IE: uninstall the
Asterisk bbb-voice package and install the freeswitch package and set
bbb-conf to use freeswitch instead of asterisk.
There is no technical merit to using Asterisk over Freeswitch other
than my familiarity with Asterisks config and not so much with
FreeSwitch. Obviously for 0.8 this is going to be a much different
story, but I have tested and know that my client program works with
the Asterisk installation.
The EBS is because of the flexibility of using it verses the instance
(ephemeral) storage. Snapshots are easily converted into AMI's and
the retention is far nicer than using something like S3 for a
persistent store.
I'm obviously open for suggestions. Also, while I have found that
spot instances are a good match for me, I am in no way saying that
there isn't a downside to this form of deployment. Before picking an
AWS solution, I would highly recommend reading the AWS documentation
on the types and pricing of the various instances available. Spot
instances are by far the cheapest, but not a perfect fit for everyone.
Basically if you need to ensure that your BBB server instance is up
when you expect it to be up, spot instances are not for you.
If you just want to test out configuration or the various types of
instance levels, then spot instances will work fine.
Also you should note that while the AWS Free Tier allows a free
instance of the t1.micro to be run, I have never gotten BBB to
function on a micro, so if you do want to test, you will most likely
incur nominal fees.
Lastly, before I publish the AMI, what should I title and describe it
as. I was thinking a description of "Unofficial BigBlueButton AMI
Ubuntu LTS 10.04" with the AMI title being "Unofficial BBB 32-bit" and
"Unofficial BBB 64-bit" respectively.
If at a later point we want to make some kind of official packaging
and testing procedure for the AMI's, then we can discuss dropping the
Unofficial, but I like the idea of the first word being "unofficial"
for the time being.
Thanks,
Doug
Fred Dixon
Thanks for sharing this, and for suggesting the prefix "Unofficial".
We currently do the BigBlueButon packaging, BigBlueButton VM, and, at
some point, we may make some 'official' BigBlueButton AMIs, but for
now we'll just focus on getting 0.8-beta and 0.8 done :-).
Regards,... Fred
--
http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/FAQ#BigBlueButton_Committer
Steve
Stephen - you mentioned EC2 working great for < 50 users: is that with a medium instance? How have you found the performance of the small instance? This may be a mute point, as I suspect that 0.8 will require a medium instance with the higher processing requirements.
Thanks,
Steve
HostBBB.com
depends on how the end user is using the system.
medium is in theory 5x the cpu
A lot of customers.... are just 1 to many... just teachers audio.
and presentation and a small instance can work fine.
The minute you have multiple cams, audio across multiple students, and
someone trying desktop sharing to more then 3-4 people need to get on
a medium instance.
The default red5 memory setting of 128MB handles about 20 users.... i
bump both the small and medium to red5 mon and max ram of 384mb , and
the server never pages out of memory.
Im not sure about 64bit large instances.... never have run them.
Regards,
Stephen