[icecast] how much horsepower will i need for streaming?

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Joern Nettingsmeier wrote:
> i'm putting together a streaming relay network for the linux audio 
> developer's conference #2 (http://www.zkm.de/lad), and i was wondering 
> how much cpu power will be required on the master server.
> 
> we need to record 2 48k stereo signals simultaneously and encode them 
> into three streams each:
> 
> 2x 54kbit/s 22k05 mono
> 2x 112kbit/s 48k stereo
> 2x 192kbit/s 48k stereo
> 
> it would be very nice if the same box could handle the streaming to 
> between 5 and 8 relay servers, so that we have only one single point of 
> failure.
> 
> how much cpu and memory do you think we'll need to be on the *very safe* 
> side ?

Icecast alone is very easy on the hardware, the source client is who's 
doing the hard encoding work. You'd want to check if your source client 
is capable of encoding those three streams easily in realtime (let it 
have overhead, so your stream doesn't get in trouble when a cronjob 
starts daily maintenance.)

On the server side, bandwidth is the limiting factor.

Also, relays get their streams from the master server, it's not the 
master server that connects to the relays to send it to them.

Just make some live tests on the master server, and while it runs, 
trigger any possible cronjobs and do other nasty things and see if the 
streams stay up. When you do the real thing, disable those cronjobs, 
don't do nasty stuff and you should be on the safe side. :)

<p>Moritz
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