Adding pre-configured Nimble Streamer

Nimble Streamer can be deployed and manipulated in various ways for various platforms. First of all you can install it from scratch on Linux, Windows or Mac on x64 or ARM. Being installed, Nimble can be controlled via WMSPanel. It provides convenience of control and reporting. Multiple server instances may be controlled via single web UI.

You can also run Nimble without registering WMSPanel, in this case you need to fix rules.conf file (e.g. /etc/nimble/rules.conf under Linux) to set streaming scenarios. This is especially useful when you automate your deployment.

However, our customers prefer registering their Nimble instances to WMSPanel even after manual setup. The problem is their settings will be replaced with default settings upon registration as it would be a new server in terms of the panel.

Previously we introduced the way to apply existing server settings via command line. Nimble takes rules.conf and applies the lines that are valid. If some entries are not valid, they will be automatically ignored.

Now we also introduce the web UI for rules.conf import and analysis. It allows specifying the config via dialog and see what is right or wrong about.

Please back up your rules.conf before using this method to avoid accidental damages.

Go to "Servers" menu then click on Add server to open servers additional buttons.

There you can see "Restore Nimble Streamer from config" button. Click on it to open the following "Restore from config" dialog. Here you can insert the routes from rules.conf.

Config restore dialog.

Now click on "Check config" button. The result will appear in the same dialog as shown below.

Analysed config.

If anything is wrong, the corresponding line will be highlighted with red.

Now you can click on "Save". This will add new server in WMSPanel and all you need now is to register your server in WMSPanel in a special way using restore command. It will appear after you click Save as shown below.

Final command to re-register the server.

You need to copy the appeared command. After closing the dialog you will see a new server in the list being marked as "offline".

Now go back to your server command line and run the command which you got in the dialog:

sudo /usr/bin/nimble_regutil --recovery-id bbc6b68c-58be-47c7-96c5-123456789

Then restart Nimble

sudo service nimble start

That's it, Nimble will appear in the list of servers as "online".

Please also check other server restore features.

• Repair configs after HW failures - this one works great if you change HW on your existing server or restore it after HW failure. 
• Deployment automation - this on is good for the cases wen you automate your infrastructure deployment. E.g. you clone virtual machine with Nimble installed, and need to register it in WMSPanel in order to get statistics and perform further setup manually for multiple servers.

Let us know if you have question on this or other features.

Related documentation

Nimble Streamer, Embedding Nimble Streamer, Repair configs after HW failures, Deploy        ment automation

Nimble Streamer deployment automation

WMSPanel is the official UI for Nimble Streamer and it is available under subscription model. Nimble Streamer is the free of charge media server which can run fine on lower-end servers or Virtual Machines.
Our customers have long and successful story of using automation deployment of Nimble Streamer, e.g. using Amazon Elastic Cloud. Nimble Streamer can be configured independently of WMSPanel specifying all settings via changing configuration files in manual mode.

However, to add pre-configured Nimble Streamer to WMSPanel for obtaining full statistics it was necessary to add each server in the control panel manually via the import configuration procedure.

Performing manual manipulations is very inconvenient in case of large number of media servers. That's why Nimble Streamer allows automating the process of adding pre-configured media server to WMSPanel.

Please back up your rules.conf before using this method to avoid accidental damages.

Notice that only active (not paused) settings are saved to rules.conf so only they will be restored.

Register a new server with existing rules

First, you can register a new server with a pre-configured rules.conf.

Run this command:

sudo /usr/bin/nimble_regutil -u admin@account.com -p password --apply-rules-conf

After that regutil registers Nimble Streamer instance and then automatically transfers the Nimble Streamer settings from /etc/nimble/rules.conf file to WMSPanel, and saves the authorization settings to the /etc/nimble/nimble.conf file for sending data to the panel, without changing the other settings.

After adding in WMSPanel, each server can be configured via Web interface. Each operation of setting up a new streaming scenario can be applied to all servers instances  immediately.

Re-apply some template rules.conf to an existing server

You can also apply some existing rules.conf file to the already registered server. You specify some rules.conf with pre-defined settings in your command and this will remove all existing settings of Nimble instance and will apply new settings instead. Use this command:

sudo /usr/bin/nimble_regutil -u admin@account.com -p password --reapply-rules-conf some_rules.conf

Here some_rules.conf is a file with some previously defined settings, it's an optional parameter.

Notice: This option is available only by request for subscribed customers. Contact our helpdesk in order to ask to enable this feature.

Adding via web UI

You may also consider adding an existing server via web UI. It does the same operation as described here but there you may also analyse the rules before applying them via WMSPanel.

Repairing after HW failure

If you existing server hardware has failed and/or you got new system on board, you may want to add this server as existing one rather than registering as new. Read this article for details of this operation.

With the described functionality, Nimble Streamer and WMSPanel users get additional benefits of automatic infrastructure deployment, best resilience and reliability of their streaming processes.

Cloud backups of Nimble configuration

Cloud backups of Nimble Streamer configuration: with this new feature you can save streaming configs of your Nimble Streamer instances into WMSPanel to improve redundancy. You can do it manually or automatically, the price is just 1 USD per month per backup.

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Related documentation

Nimble Streamer installation, Nimble Streamer configuration and control options

Data disaster recovery for Nimble Streamer

WMSPanel collaborates with Nimble Streamer via sync-ups exchange. Nimble is sending statistics data to WMSPanel service for further processing and gets responses.

This scheme assumes that a Nimble Streamer media server is constantly online and it keeps sending sync-ups continuously. Internet is a very complex network and sometimes some of sub-networks and entire countries become invisible to other segments. In this case our server will not be able to send data and this might cause data losses.

Nimble Streamer now has proper improvements to prevent data losses and recover from disasters like that. Here is how it works now.

1. When Nimble Streamer is launched after installation and registration in WMSPanel, is starts sending sync-ups.
2. If wmspanel.com is not available for some reason, Nimble still tries to reach it, trying to send sync-ups for several times.
3. If the service in unavailable for a long time, then the delta for the most useful daily statistics are accumulated on the server side.
4. When the service becomes available, the calculated data is sent and WMSPanel fills the gap between the moment when the server "disappeared" and current moment.

The following most useful daily statistics are saved and recovered:

• Connections count - total and per-protocol;
• Traffic;
• Peak bandwidth - incoming and outgoing;
• Average view time;
• Total view time.

This is the most critical data often used for billing customers, that's why it's saved and recovered. So your critical stats are always safe and you can rely on WMSPanel daily reporting.

Let us know if there are any other WMSPanel data recovery and consistency concerns.

Related documentation

Nimble Streamer, Repair Nimble config after HW failure, WMSPanel reporting,

Repair and migrate Nimble configs

Streaming infrastructure maintenance requires some operations with hardware. The hardware may fail some time, it may be upgraded to improve the performance, or your system may need to be moved to other physical location. Being part of streaming infrastructure, Nimble Streamer server instance may need to down and then re-installed again. As it's a high-performance software, it may have a lot of streams' setting so losing the configuration in case of hardware changes is a bad option.

To cover cases like hardware change we added a recovery mode for Nimble Streamer installer. It will re-register the instance in recovery mode and WMSPanel will push existing configs to it.

RTMP, RTSP and Icecast pulled streams fallback

RTMP to HLS transmuxing is one of the popular use cases of Nimble Streamer as well as other protocols transmuxing. It allows producing HLS with high efficiency and low resources consumption which allows building robust streaming solutions. However, Nimble is just a link in delivery chain and other elements like source transcoder or origin server may go down. This is why a robust live streaming network needs to have multiple media sources. And Nimble Streamer needs to handle all fallback sources and still produce output streams with no interruptions.

This is why Nimble Streamer team introduces RTMP, RTSP and Icecast pull sources fallback support.

When you define RTMP pull streams, you just specify 2 or more sources of the same pulled stream and if the first stream goes down, other stream will be picked up for processing.

To set this up you need to follow basic setup steps described in Pull RTMP to HLS transmuxing article. The main enhancement is multiple edit boxes in Live pull settings for adding new pull URL.

Being in the list of pulled streams, you can click on Add URL and see the following dialog.

Here the URL is a mandatory field while Fallback URLs can be added one by one, regardless of their number. Saving the settings will launch the RTMP to HLS processing. Also you can use advanced RTMP pull settings to specify incoming RTMP streams. Please read the Processing RTMP and RTSP pull streams per request article for details.

WMSPanel also provides multiple edit capabilities. You may edit RTMP pull sources as a text setting to able to do things like:

• adding big amount of streams;
• making backup and restore of settings;
• transition of settings between servers.

Just click on Multiple edit button to use the dialog as shown below. Here, a "dr_urls" is a field containing fallback links mentioned above. "url", "application" and "stream" are the fields available in the "Add URLs" dialog.

With this entire failover feature you can easily handle RTMP disaster recovery in case of any origin source availability problems.
You may also consider using RTMP streaming API to control this behavior remotely.

Take a look at this tutorial showing the setup process for Icecast as an example.

More capabilities 

Also take a look at RTMP setup in Nimble Streamer video tutorial to learn more about basic RTMP scenarios.

If you need to secure your RTMP streams, you can also use SSL for RTMP transmission.
When transmuxing incoming RTMP streams, you can use Nimble Advertizer for server-side ads insertion. It provides a framework for inserting pre-roll and mid-roll ads into live streams for further output via RTMP, SLDP and Icecast with custom business logic and per-user ads.
Visit Advertizer web page to find out more.

If you need to change content parameters, like change the bitrate, use our Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer to transform. It has high performance and low resource usage.

Please also check other live streaming, audio streaming and streaming infrastructure features available in Nimble Streamer and let us know if you face any questions or issues.

Related documentation

Live Streaming features in Nimble, Live Transcoder for Nimble Streamer, RTMP feature set, Pull RTMP to HLS transmuxing, RTMP republishing via Nimble, Audio streaming features

Disaster recovery for Wowza agent

WMSPanel interacts with Wowza Streaming Engine agent via the "agent" - it's an add-on which is installed into Wowza. This agent is sending statistics data to WMSPanel service for further processing.

This interaction scheme assumes that a media server is constantly online and it keeps sending sync-up all the time. However, Internet is a complex infrastructure and sometimes some networks and entire countries become invisible to the global networks. In this case our agent was not able to send data which might cause data losses.

Now WMSPanel team introduces agent improvements to prevent data losses and recover from disasters like that. Here is how it works now.

1. When Wowza is restarted after agent installation, this agent starts sending sync-ups
2. If wmspanel.com is not available for some reason, agent still tries to reach it, trying to send sync-ups for several times.
3. If the service in unavailable for a long time, then the delta for the most useful daily statistics are accumulated on the agent.
4. When the service becomes available, the calculated data is sent and WMSPanel fills the gap between the moment when the server "disappeared" and current moment.

The following most useful daily statistics are saved and recovered:

• Connections count - total and per-protocol;
• Traffic;
• Peak bandwidth - incoming and outgoing;
• Average view time;
• Total view time.

This is the most critical data often used for billing customers, that's why it's saved and recovered. With this feature your critical statistics are always safe and you can rely on WMSPanel daily reporting.

Let us know if there are any other WMSPanel data recovery and consistency concerns.

Related documentation

End user reporting for Wowza, In-depth statistics framework, Daily statistics, Billing customers using daily stats