Need help for a project

[Bhoot]

Hi. I am looking for a solution for an office. The office is quite dynamic and trainings/presentations (classes) are held almost everyday. Every client has been given their own laptop/tablet. Total number of people undergoing "classes" is about 200 as of now and future proofing it would be say 500. Right now people are connecting through different terminals and copying stuff off wifi/wires and reducing the efficiency. It wastes about ~10 minutes for a ~1gb (video) file to transfer. The quality of training videos on the server is 1080p and it has been downsized to 360p-480p to help in faster transfers. I do use FreeNAS at my house but again that is a Home Server and I would never be close to the kind of numbers this office is looking for hence I was a bit stumped. The board of that office did try contacting FreeNAS but instantly ran into issues of large numbers being served video files and services provided in my country India.
I was hoping someone could advise me on some kind of a solution. Would it be possible to simultaneously connect 200-500 clients with say some 10gbps pcie cards wires going into multiple switches followed by routers and serving video files. The office also needs security/safety. They saw "their videos" making it to youtube because some trainees/employees copied it and put them out there. The videos were removed ofcourse but I hope you know what I mean, but it was frustrating. I just need some guidance to setting up 1 or maybe 2 servers and serving data.
I just found out 1080p/60fps need a max of 12mbps. A 10gbe can get 500 clients @20mbps means I can attach multiple APs and get it well devided and keep out dead spots.
Please do suggest/comment on what all can be done and what should I change if at all. The company looking for solution is ready to pay but FreeNAS team won't be able to provide 1:1 service. Should I stick to FreeNAS or do you suggest some other OS. I know this forum will tell me to use FreeNAS and I won't say a NO. I personally love FreeNAS but I am just wondering how well it can be used in a commercial setup without any technical support/help.
Thank you for your help.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

I'm not sure if you're skinning the right cat.

Copying large training videos to clients seems like the wrong way to solve this problem and have your intellectual property easily escape.

We use Plex to host training, compliance and meeting videos. Transcoding is done offline, never live. We could easily stream to 50-70 simultaneous clients (all LAN-connected) with a Plex server and a FreeNAS backend (10G, clients 1G). This would be easy to scale using multiple Plex heads coming off a FreeNAS server. Robust, reliable and with an easy to understand interface for your clients.

You might also consider the Unreal Media Server which is designed to do just want you want. It seems to easily scale to a large number of clients based on its specs document (last page). We investigated it briefly and didn't mind the $1,000 unlimited license but didn't want to have to host it (and buy licenses for) a Windows Server.

Spit-balling, we figured we could deploy two or three Plex heads for a lower cost than one Unreal Streaming Media server. The Plex server we spun up as a VM inside our existing XenServer was plenty for our needs so no additional hardware was required.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Bhoot]

I'm not sure if you're skinning the right cat.

Copying large training videos to clients seems like the wrong way to solve this problem and have your intellectual property easily escape.

We use Plex to host training, compliance and meeting videos. Transcoding was done offline, never live. We could easily stream to 50-70 simultaneous clients (all LAN-connected) with a Plex server and a FreeNAS backend (10G, clients 1G). This would be easy to scale using multiple Plex heads coming off a FreeNAS server. Robust, reliable and with an easy to understand interface for your clients.

You might also consider the Unreal Media Server which is designed to do just want you want. It seems to easily scale to a large number of clients based on its specs document (last page). We investigated it briefly and didn't mind the $1,000 unlimited license but didn't want to have to host it (and buy licenses for) a Windows Server.

Spit-balling, we figured we could deploy two or three Plex heads for a lower cost than one Unreal Streaming Media server. The Plex server we spun up as a VM inside our existing XenServer was plenty for our needs so no additional hardware was required.

Cheers,
Matt

Thank you for the quick reply. I also shared my concerns over distributing ip content to people without a non disclosure agreement. Your plan looks almost perfect for his needs. I just want to know what is/how to transcode offline? Again we could put multi 10g cables to multi switches to even more AP to give everyone a good stable collection.
My initial idea was to get 4x10g cables from the server to switches and maybe have each 10g connected to 20AP. Total of 80 APs give a lot of connection points and no blind spots. Would we be able to get 1080p different streams through from an array of 6gbps sata3 ports to 200 clients? Would I be limited by the sata speeds? The main database is on a separate server and this machine could be a 3 disk raidz server. I know not recommended but a cheap day to day driver.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

what is/how to transcode offline?

Look at the Plex Media Optimizer Overview and the bottom on this page on the Plex Transcoder.

Optimize and transcode your videos from their original format to the best version for your playback devices in advance instead of on-the-fly. That way, instead of having to do the conversion as the person requests the video, it's already in the correct format. All it has to do is send the video instead of having to process it first. You can reduce your overall bandwidth usage by tweaking the optimization settings.

get 4x10g cables from the server to switches and maybe have each 10g connected to 20AP. Total of 80 APs give a lot of connection points and no blind spots.

WiFi pretty much sucks. The greater the density and radio congestion, the more it sucks.

There are only a handful of non-overlapping WiFi radio channels available. Even well-spaced, with 80 access points, you're going to have interference. You should research how many video streams you can pull across WiFi without running into performance issues. My guess is that the number is lower than you're attempting.

Would we be able to get 1080p different streams through from an array of 6gbps sata3 ports to 200 clients? Would I be limited by the sata speeds?

That's a math question. I don't do math. Add it up. If it is less than 50% of the theoretical maximum, you're in good shape. If it is above 80%, add capacity. Between 50% and 80%, sharpen your pencil because that is the danger zone.

I wouldn't get hung up on 1080p: you can drop down to 720p and cut your bandwidth requirements by more than half and no one in your training class will know or care.

3 disk raidz server

Again, do the math.

My guess is you're going to be bumping into problems with IOPS before raw throughput. RAIDZ is going to be slow. You'll get twice the performance (IOPS and bandwidth) by adding a fourth drive and turning that into a striped mirror.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Bhoot]

Look at the Plex Media Optimizer Overview and the bottom on this page on the Plex Transcoder.

Sounds about right. Sorry have never used optimize on personal media server running 3 streams.. LoL.. Forgot about it completely

WiFi pretty much sucks

. The greater the density and radio congestion, the more it sucks.

I love wired and I hate WiFi. If it ain't wired I can't complain, but like I said the trainees are poor and can't afford devices I would recommend. Hence to get everyone on board we let the students use any and every device. I think I would drop the number of APs and get better/higher bandwidth MiMo routers. I think those should be able to serve better without blocking/overlapping a lot of channels

I wouldn't get hung up on 1080p: you can drop down to 720p and cut your bandwidth requirements by more than half and no one in your training class will know or care.

True that. On a 5"-14" screen 720p is more or less similar to 1080p.

My guess is you're going to be bumping into problems with IOPS before raw throughput. RAIDZ is going to be slow. You'll get twice the performance (IOPS and bandwidth) by adding a fourth drive and turning that into a striped mirror.

TBH the guy would even take a stripe since everything is backed up. According to him the machine Don't need scrubs; Don't need maintenance to which I disagreed and I think he was joking too. :D
However it does give me great confidence on using such a system and telling him to learn a bit on maintenance.