Custom Container for Wowza Streaming Engine

Overview

This is a repository for building a Wowza Streaming Engine contaienr image from scratch, which can be applied to your custom container image of Wowza Streaming Engine instance. This container image is based on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy) release.

Although there is official public container images from Wowza at Docker Hub (https://hub.docker.com/r/wowzamedia/wowza-streaming-engine-linux), this repository gives you a chance to optimize your own container image for Wowza Streaming Engine. For example, you can reduce or optimize a footprint of container image, and your custom logics and configurations can be pre-installed to your own container image.

This container image supports SSL/TLS enablement, which can be combined with Cert Manager in the Kubernetes deployment.

NOTE: By using this image, you will agree to comply with the Wowza EULA

Quick Start

1. Use our public container image

We have pushed our custom container image for Wowza Streaming Engine (Linux) at GitHub Container Registy. You can use the following container images:

• ghcr.io/liveinstantly/wowza-streaming-engine-ubuntu:latest

Here is a sample command to pull an image for your Docker environment.

docker pull ghcr.io/liveinstantly/wowza-streaming-engine-ubuntu:latest

2. Run a container image

This section introduces how to run the Wowza Streaming Engine container in your Docker environment.

Wowza Streaming Engine configured by this container setup listens the following ports as default:

Port	Service Description
1935	WSE HTTP Default Streaming
8086	WSE Administration (HTTP)
8087	WSE REST API Interface (HTTP)
8088	WSE Manager Web Portal (HTTP)

The following environment values are for customizing container startup parameters:

Environment Variables	Description
WSE_MGR_USER	Specify a username for Wowza Streaming Engine Manager. If this parameter isn't used, the default username is wowza.
WSE_MGR_PASS	Specify a password for Wowza Streaming Engine Manager. If this parameter isn't used, the ddefault password is wowza.
WSE_LIC	Specify your Wowza Streaming Engine license string. If this parameter isn't used, Wowza's default trial license key is used.
WSE_IP_PARAM	Specify an internal IP address for the container. If this parameter isn't used, the default parameter localhost is used.
WSE_TLS_CERT	Specify a mount-point directory of SSL/TLS private key (tls.key) and certificate (tls.crt) for Wowza Streaming Engine.
WSE_MGR_TLS_CERT	Specify a mount-point directory of SSL/TLS private key (tls.key) and certificate (tls.crt) for Wowza Streaming Engine Manager.

Here is a sample command for running a container instance. You may need to create docker volumes to mount the volumes for storing your own configuration files and server working files (e.g. logs, stats).

docker run -d --rm \
    // for Default Streaming Engine
    --expose 1935/tcp --expose 8086/tcp --expose 8087/tcp \
    --publish 1935:1935 --publish 8086:8086 --publish 8087:8087 \
    // for SSL/TLS Streaming Engine
    --expose 443/tcp --publish 443:443 \
    // for Non-SSL Manager
    --expose 8088/tcp  --publish 8088:8088 \
    // for SSL/TLS Manager
    --expose 8090/tcp  --publish 8090:8090 \
    --volume wse-engine-logs:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/logs \
    --volume wse-manager-logs:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/manager/logs \
    --volume supervisor-logs:/var/log/supervisor/ \
    --volume wse-engine-conf:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/conf \
    --volume wse-manager-conf:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/manager/conf \
    --volume wse-engine-content:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/manager/content \
    --volume wse-engine-keys:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/manager/keys \
    --volume wse-engine-apps:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/applications \
    --volume wse-engine-stats:/usr/local/WowzaStreamingEngine/stats \
    --volume sample-tls-1:/etc/cert-engine \
    --volume sample-tls-2:/etc/cert-engine \
    --env WSE_MGR_USER=[username] \
    --env WSE_MGR_PASS=[password] \
    --env WSE_LIC=[license] \
    --env WSE_IP_PARAM=[wowza-ip-address] \
    --env WSE_TLS_CERT=/etc/cert-engine \
    --env WSE_TLS_CERT=/etc/cert-manager \
    ghcr.io/liveinstantly/wowza-streaming-engine-ubuntu:latest

You can also do a test run with the following command:

yarn run start

To stop a test run, please run the following command:

yarn run stop

Build your own custom container image

Details of build scripts

The build scripts in this repository will give you a way to build a container image from scratch with public Linux container image. This will use ubuntu:jammy container image as base Linux image for Wowza Streaming Engine.

The build scripts will download Wowza Streaming Engine Installer binary from Wowza's public website, do unattended installation, and change server configuration files.

NOTE: From 4.8.21 or later version of Wowza Streaming Engine, Wowza seems not to deliver installer binaries at thier public website. Your will need to download from Wowza Portal after logging in with your Wowza account. Please copy the installer to image_root/root folder before building your own container image.

The changes of server configuration files are as below:

• conf/Server.xml
  • Allow REST API Interface access from everywhere (*) instead of localhost only (127.0.0.1)
• conf/Tune.xml
  • Change heap size from Development mode (TuningHeapSizeDevelopment) to Production mode (TuningHeapSizeProduction)
• conf/live/Application.xml
  • 1. Add cmafstreamingpacketizer to Streams/LiveStreamPacketizers.
  • 2. Add all VOD Caption Providers to TimedText/VODTimedTextProviders.
  • 3. Add the following properties to LiveStreamPacketizer.
    • cupertinoChunkDurationTarget = 2000 ms
    • cupertinoMaxChunkCount = 60
    • cupertinoPlaylistChunkCount = 30
    • mpegdashChunkDurationTarget = 2000 ms
    • mpegdashMaxChunkCount = 60
    • mpegdashPlaylistChunkCount = 30
    • cmafSegmentDurationTarget = 2000 ms
    • cmafMaxSegmentCount = 60
    • cmafPlaylistSegmentCount = 30
    • cupertinoCreateAudioOnlyRendition = true
    • cupertinoCreateVideoOnlyRendition = true
    • cupertinoPacketizeAllStreamsAsTS = true
  • 4. Add the following properties to HTTPStreamer.
    • cupertinoExtXVersion = 5 (use version 5)
    • cupertinoCodecStringFormatId = 2 (use new codec id format)
  • 5. Add the following Custom properties.
    • mpegdashMinBufferTime = 6000 ms
• conf/vod/Application.xml
  • 1. Add all VOD Caption Providers to TimedText/VODTimedTextProviders.
  • 2. Add the following properties to HTTPStreamer.
    • cupertinoChunkDurationTarget = 2000 ms
    • mpegdashSegmentDurationTarget = 2000 ms
  • 3. Add the following Custom properties.
    • mpegdashMinBufferTime = 6000 ms
• bin/startup.sh
  • Change startup service for supervisord.
• manager/bin/startmgr.sh
  • Change startup service for supervisord.

Run a build command

If you want to build your own container image, you can run the following command. This will create a container image named with local/wowza-streaming-engine-ubuntu:latest.

yarn run test:build

Run and Debug a container instance

You can run the following command to start your own container instance.

yarn run test:start

And run the following command to debug a running instance interally by logging in with bash.

docker exec -it <container_id> bash

To stop a test run, please run the following command:

yarn run test:stop

References

• Wowza Streaming Engine
• Download Wowza Streaming Engine
• Latest software updates for Wowza Streaming Engine
• Wowza Streaming Engine 4.8.21 Release Notes
• Wowza Streaming Engine release history