WS 2008 is Out of Beta with WMS and IIS7 Media Pack!
Well we have entered into the final stages of the development of out next platform for web solutions. Along with the server itself however a couple of add-ons have also been released. The first is Windows Media Services which provides the capability to stream video on demand. The second is the IIS7 Media Pack module that provides bit rate throttling for progressive video downloads.
Web, Standard, Data Center, and Enterprise editions of WS 2008 RC0 are now available for download along with Windows Media Services. I had the opportunity to configure a virtual environment showcasing the new caching capabilities of WMS and thought I would share a few of my experiences.
I started with the Idea of running WS Enterprise as my Origin Server and running the Web Server edition as the proxy. When you first install WS 2008, you will be prompted with the new management interface that makes configuration of role and feature specific functionality incredibly simple.
WMS is not available in the existing build, so the first thing you need to do is install the download OOB WMS module. Once that is done, when you select roles you will be presented with a selection to choose from (Note: the differences between the Web and Enterprise version). If you happen to select a role that has dependencies on other services, these will be added by default.
Enabling the caching functionality on the Web version could not be easier. You select the server you want to configure in our management interface, select the properties TAB, Select Cache/Proxy management, and Right click WMS Cache Proxy enable the functionality. You can then double click on the same place to get prompted with the configuration options as seen below. You can also go and do the same on the origin server to control aspects of the caching such expiry time and so on related to the individual publishing points.
Details on the configuration options available can be found in the help files so I will not go into that here but one thing to keep in mind is the way the proxy is expecting to get requests. Basically the scenario is that all streaming requests for content off the Origin server need to be routed to the IP of the caching server. This can be done through firewall configuration but if you are looking to do this in a virtual test environment the easiest way I have found is modify your LMHosts file to resolve requests to the origin server with the IP of the proxy server. Another point to keep in mind is that HTTP streaming (Only protocol supported by Silverlight!) is not enabled by default. You need to go into the Properties TAB for the server, select the control protocol and enable a specific open port.
Hope this helps in getting you started on using WMS in WS 2008!
John
