Flash Communication Server Article

Clustering Flash Communication Server for Live Webcasts

Novell Inc. was looking for a web streaming solution that would deliver a high-quality video/audio-enabled presentation. On top of that, they wanted to customize the presentation of that video to illustrate the Novell brand. Novell also wanted a data-enabled solution that not only handled video playback, but also facilitated real-time interactions between client and presenter (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The Novell Critical Mass Training Project interface

As the developer for Novell's solution, I looked in forums and on lists to try to see how others had approached this problem, but to no avail. Others were having the same problems that I was experiencing, and it took a few weeks of trial and error until I came up with the solution that I will share with you in this tutorial.

A solution like Novell's demands a stable, high-performance infrastructure. In this tutorial, I'll go over how to create an environment with multiple Flash Communication Server installations. I'll show you how to cluster them to disperse live events across multiple processors, increasing your possible bandwidth and heightening performance.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Macromedia Flash Communication Server

• Try
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Macromedia Flash MX 2004

• Try
• Buy

Tutorials and sample files:

• clustering_sample_files.zip (ZIP, 103K)

Note: The downloadable ZIP file contains two files for you to install:

• MultiConnection.as (7K): Place this AS file in your class library.
• Main.asc (1K): Place this in your application directory on each server.

Prerequisite knowledge

Intermediate Flash Communication Server knowledge as well as AS 2.0 experience

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