Install Wowza Streaming Engine on Microsoft Azure

Justin Miller:

Remote computing in the cloud is a need had by many, but if you’re already using Microsoft Azure for multiple services, why not take it to the next step and add Wowza Streaming Engine as a virtual machine? From the Azure portal, we can simply select Marketplace and then from there do a search for Wowza. Choose Wowza Streaming Engine from the results, and then pick your software plan. Now there’ll be an option where you can bring your own Wowza license you purchase directly from us or an hourly paid option that’s directly through Microsoft. Either can be used from the available software plans, or you can select between Linux or Windows. We’re going to choose Windows PAID. You could start to configure the virtual machine by clicking Create, but in our case, we’ll use a preset configuration to speed up the process. From the preset options, we recommend General for the work environment and for the workload type, you may want the F-Series if you plan to have heavy transcoding occurring. Otherwise, the D-Series should work just fine for you.

Now, we can continue to create the virtual machine. For the creation process, there are a few things you’ll need to do. While the subscription can be left alone, you will need to choose your resource group, or create a new one. You’ll also need to name your virtual machine. Then once you’ve done that, select the region it’s going to be run from, which is well, closest to where you’ll be broadcasting from. You’ll also need to determine your availability options. The rest of the settings you can leave as default. All that’s left now is for you to create the admin credentials for the virtual machine. Now this will be the login to that virtual machine, not to Wowza Streaming Engine. Once you’re done, go to Review and make sure all your settings are correct and then once you’re sure, click Create. It’ll take several minutes for the virtual machine to be deployed, but once it’s finished, you can Go to resources and verify it’s up and running.

Now, in order to configure Wowza Streaming Engine on a new virtual machine, we need to go in via remote desktop and change the username and password. So click on Connect, and choose the remote desktop option. You may need to Download the RDP file for the process. Once in the remote desktop, enter the admin credentials you created earlier to access the virtual machine. When you’re logged in and have accessed the server, locate the Wowza Streaming Engine directory on the server.

Now inside this directory, you’ll find a comp folder containing admin.password. Open this in Notepad and then you can change the admin username and password. We’re just going to change the password for now, leaving the default username Wowza alone. Once these changes have been saved, we can return to the resource area in the Azure Portal and using the public IP address to access Wowza Streaming Engine. Now for this, it’s that IP address:8088. Now you can sign in with Wowza and the changed password we just did and then begin setting up Wowza Streaming Engine. That’s it for Wowza Streaming Engine installation on Azure. Thanks for watching and happy streaming.