Streaming media server with high network load?

[kattrap]

I've got an incoming request for a Darwin quicktime streaming VM guest (RHEL). Peak load can be anywhere between 450 - 900 mb/s (seasonal, not 24/7/365).

Current basic esx setup is a pair of load balanced trunked gigE for guest traffic. Guest network traffic for other VMs is (comparatively) very very low. ~10:1 guest:host ratio.

I'm looking for opinions and other setups that have streaming server guests.

Thanks in advance!

[williambishop]

You could swing this if they are FC attached hosts (decent array required). This is going to pretty much be determined by your storage system and it's connectivity. iscsi/nas is ethernet, which MIGHT burst that high, but rarely (I've never actually seen or heard of it sustaining anything over about 45% of link capacity). Whereas FC does this fairly easily (depending on your system).

Can you do it? Yes. Depends on what you have. It may be that your setup does not support it, not every server is better off virtualized, simply because it might be cheaper to do it physically (it would certainly be cheaper to build a local server with the prerequisistes to complete this task than it would to be buy an array and fc network if you did not already own it--if it was for a single instance).

I may be misunderstanding what you are asking for, if I am, please direct further.

[kattrap]

The storage is FC. The server will stream webcams, it's not doing any encoding or other high storage/cpu load services. Think of it as an aggragation point where network load is the only chokepoint.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/server/streaming/index.html