So excuses over I have decided to have a good look adaptive streaming and Microsoft adaptive streaming capabilities in Windows IIS 7.

Adaptive Streaming What is it?

Traditionally streamed assets are encoded at a specific bitrate and presented along the lines of low, medium and high quality streams. It’s up to the users to request the appropriate stream for their connectivity. If they pick the wrong one they must stop the stream and try a different one.

Apart from the obvious issues with customer satisfaction, this raises issues with content providers. They have to provide multiple encodings of assets at differing bit rates, users can request inappropriate streams leading to waste of network bandwidth and capacity. “I need to server 10,000 stream but actually need capacity to server 10,500 dues to user error”. When you consider different container formats you quickly end up with a considerable number of stream to manage and associated infrastructure.

Move Networks have a patented adaptive streaming technology which:  

“divides video into segments called “streamlets” and encodes them using a single process for multiple bandwidths (dial-up, broadband, wireless) and platforms (computer, television, cell phone). A dual-pass variable bit rate encode is used on both live and on-demand streams, preparing video images with sharp, HD quality”

Microsoft invested an undesclosed sum in Move Networks in August last year after announcing a partnership with MN in March of the same year in relation to the SilverLight cross browser player.

Microsoft IIS 7 with Smooth Streaming 

So IIS 7 recently received adaptive streaming capability in the form of an IIS media extension called Smooth Streaming.

IIS Smooth Streaming

This diagram gives you a flavour for how the technology delivers a variable bit rate stream to the player.

Installing on IIS 7 with Smooth Streaming Windows Server 2008

Select Server role

Message about required dependencies

Intro to IIS7

Confirm installation components 
Selected ASP.NET and then let the defaults install

Quick points of interest:

IIS 7 doesn’t use a metabase anymore for configuration. Everything (components) is configured in XML configuration files. If you intend to configure IIS7 remotely this capability needs to be installed. In fact most IIS6 standard functions like support for authentication, serving default page or directory browsing needs to be configured/installed. This is good news from a security/attack vector perspective but a pain in the posterior when you are doing hands on lab type work   – can’t please all the people all the time.

Installing

Components installed results

and install log

Viewing Server Roles now shows

Ok Once IIS7 is installed lets install Smooth Streaming media extension

And that’s that. Don’t even need a reboot

You can download the demo material from Microsoft

OR

You can encode your you own using Microsoft Expression Encoder

Great Guide here

Install

GUI

Expression Encoder 2 SP1 provides built-in features that make it easy to create Smooth Streaming presentations simply by choosing Adaptive Streaming video and audio profiles and the IIS Smooth Streaming output media format

Playback and Adaptive streaming in practice

Screenshot shows player. Notice the graph at bottom left.

This shows the bit rate of the stream.

In this screenshot I have throttled the bandwidth to demonstrate the artifacts of the lower bit rate stream.

The quality is superb

Again I throttle the bandwidth

and then remove the restriction it resolves

Links

More details for IIS7 configuration

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/569/smooth-streaming-for-iis-70—managing-your-presentations/

Silverlight

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Deep Dive IIS 7 configuration

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/127/deep-dive-into-iis-7-configuration/

Expressions Encoder

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc507507.aspx

Saw this and following on from my TA Tips for Newbies thought this was useful

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/bb986609.aspx

On Demand Live Meeting: TechNet Presents: MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture– session 1, Infrastructure Architecture Overview
This first session will introduce the “MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture” webcast series, giving an overview of the series and what’s to come. We will then move in to an overview session looking at the general architecture strategies of specific technology areas, such as adopting Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 and show some real benefits from their deployment. Datacentre consolidation is also a serious consideration for many so we’ll be looking how Microsoft Hyper-V and the System Center suite of tools can be used to accelerate this and ensure long term reliability from this approach. Finally we’ll cover some of the other virtualization strategies we’re seeing, such as when and why we would look to virtualize particular workloads, how virtualization can support branch office models and remote working and finally Microsoft overall virtualization storey, including Presentation and Application virtualization.

ON DEMAND TechNet Presents: MCS Talks Infrastructure Architecture – session 2, Core Infrastructure
This session will look at core infrastructure services, focussing on the decisions commonly faced by enterprises when deploying Active Directory. We’ll look at how the improvements in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 can help rationalize the Active Directory infrastructure while still supporting complex and disperse environments. We will cover the design process for an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) upgrade and consolidation project, considering the key decisions which must be made and how these will benefit an enterprise environment. New features such as read-only domain controllers (RODCs) and fine-grained password policies will be covered as well as more general design principles and considerations for remote workers. Finally we will cover how it is possible to take advantage of new virtualization technologies in supporting Active Directory. TO ACCESS THE MEETING ON DEMAND PLEASE CLICK REGISTER AND FOLLOW THE STEPS

This is a pretty good synopsis of Windows 2008 Core Functionality and why you should adopt Windows Server 2008 from Emulex’s perspective.

http://www.emulex.com/products/software/hbanyware/ds_hba.jsp

PDF Version
http://www.emulex.com/white/hba/WinServer2008-3.pdf

Trends. These are the key areas Microsoft has identified for attention in the next gen infrastructure

1) Greater use of “simple” lightweight protocols such as HTTP/HTTPS

2) Multi-Server and Remote Server Management is easy with 2008

3) Virtualisation with HA

• This is achieved with clustering in Hyper-V 1 and is greatly improved with CSV (Cluster Shared Volumes) in R2

4) Lower Cost Remote Workforce (including Branch Offices)

So  how are these addressed with Windows 2008 Server & beyond?

REMOTE WORKERS

Read only Domain
Allows for secure deployment of AD and Global Catalogue at Branch offices. In a R/O configuration passwords do not replicated by default. So if you configure an account in your head office that user will not be able to authenticate against the branch AD if connectivity is lost. There is a group policy to enable this and you need to configure machine accounts as well as user accounts.

if you for example, provide a new laptop and pre-cache the user account but leave the machine account unset no login for that user or any user on that machine.   

Delegate AD roles
Another function that further enhances AD security while simplifying administration is the ability to delegate AD tasks. A word of warning, Domain Admin credentials cannot be cached and it is possible to find yourself in a situation were nobody can authenticate against a R/O AD server even with valid credentials due to the restrictions that can be placed on admin accounts.    

Terminal Services Gateway

Has two Configure Polices

1) Connection authorisation policy:  Defines who can connect
2) Resource authorisation policy: Define what they can connect to

TS Gateway works as a proxy to the back-end server. Thus removing the need for VPN connectivity.

Works via HTTPS

Installing TS Web Access allows you to connect via browser rather than TSclient

When the gateway web site is created it needs configuring to activate.  IIS needs configuration as the TSGateway hostname isn’t populated by default in the website config.

Set DefaultTSGateway to the host that is the TS Gateway

TSRemote App

Provides terminal services at the application level. The application looks like it is running local e.g. Printing is redirected to local printer, however the application is actually been processed on the remote server. 

BranchCache

This is a proxy technology that reduces the amount of bandwidth utilised by branch offices. On the first request for a file a hash is generated for that file, this effectively makes the file a target for the cache. On the second request a copy is either storing on a central proxy location at the branch office or advertised by the host receiving the file (via its hash value). On the third request for the file depending on the configured method the file is either provided from the central cache or provided from a local peer. Any authentication required to access the file is conducted prior to the file been made available to the client

DATA CENTRE

Unified Management

The use of RPC requires (without modification of registry) high ports to be opened on firewall/s. 

ServerCore
This is a stripped back version of the OS that is managed via a command line and very limited set of gui’s (notepad, regedit etc). As the name suggest ServerCore is a collection of core components  such as DNS, DHCP, WIN, FileServer and AD. ServerCore has a number of limitations and as a result cannot be used to for all the applications that the full server can provided e.g. currently does not provide ASP.NET functionality.

PowerShell
PowerShell is the scripting language used to managed just about every aspect of Windows 2008 Server and associated server products. Targeted at simplifying the management of deployments of servers.  

HA for Virtualisation

Hyper-V relies on Windows Cluster Services to provide HA. Limitation in R1 is the requirement for a one LUN per VM to mitigate the risk to other VMs in the event of failure that requires the migration of VM to HA cluster partner. W2K8 R2 introduces the concept of Clustered Shared Volume. This technology allows for multiple hosts to connect to a LUN at the same time enabling VMs to be managed by separate hosts sharing the same storage.