Clusters
A Cluster is the computing core that powers everything in VVCR. It is the container that houses and connects everything else in VVCR, like your streams, destinations, and recordings. A cluster runs on an AWS instance.
Instances are a virtual environment or essentially a virtual computer. VVCR connects to your AWS EC2 account and acts as a UI to create and work within that instance / virtual computer. You can create your instance in different types and sizes, depending on your needs.
The instance operates from an AWS data center located in different Regions worldwide.
Select the Region closest to your source and destination when creating a Cluster. This will maintain the lowest possible latency for your streams.
Here are the currently supported AWS Regions:
- us-east-1: US East (N. Virginia)
- us-east-2: US East (Ohio)
- us-west-1: US West (N. California)
- us-west-2: US West (Oregon)
- ca-central-1: Canada (Central)
- eu-north-1: Europe (Stockholm)
- eu-south-1: Europe (Milan)
- eu-west-1: Europe (Ireland)
- eu-west-2: Europe (London)
- eu-west-3: Europe (Paris)
- eu-central -1: Europe (Frankfurt)
- af-south-1: Africa (Cape Town)
- ap-northeast-1: Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
- ap-northeast-2: Asia Pacific (Seoul)
- ap-northeast-3: Asia Pacific (Osaka)
- ap-south-1: Asia Pacific (Mumbai)
- ap-southeast-1: Asia Pacific (Singapore)
- ap-southeast-2: Asia Pacific (Sydney
- ap-east-1: Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)
- me-south-1: Middle East (Bahrain)
- sa-east-1: South America (São Paulo)
- me-central-1: Middle East (UAE)
- me-south-1: Middle East (Bahrain)
Adding A Cluster
To create a cluster, click on the Clusters tab and select Add New Cluster.
This opens the Cluster Creation Wizard. Follow the prompts, and it will recommend the best configuration for your project. If you want to skip the prompts and adjust the settings yourself, click Manual Setup.
Add a Name for your Cluster and select the Region closest to your video sources. Once done, click Next.
Answer the following questions about your project:
- How many input streams will you send to your cluster?
- How many output streams will you send out from your cluster?
- What is the average video resolution of your streams?
- What is the average bitrate of your streams?
Once done, click Next.
Decide if you want to enable Transcoding on the cluster. Transcoding allows you to do the following:
- Change the resolution of your input and output streams.
- Use NDI to transfer feeds between your Production Instances
- Create HLS Destinations
- Create lower-resolution multiviews for monitoring your streams in unstable network environments
Choose to Use GPU-enabled transcoding instances.
On default, all VVCR Clusters and Production Instances are CPU-based. GPU-trancoders encode video at higher speeds and power efficiency. This is only available with the g4dn instance type series. It is automatically enabled when you create a Cluster or Production Instances with that instance type.
Then answer the following questions:
- How many streams will be transcoded at the same time?
- What is the average video resolution of your transcoded streams?
- What is your transcoded stream’s average bitrate?
Once you're done, click Next.
If you don’t need to use transcoding, click No and then Next.
You will be given a summary page of VVCR’s recommended settings based on your answers. If you want to make any adjustments, just click on the dropdown menus.
Under Instances Configuration, you can enable Persistent IP. This allows you to keep the same IP Addresses for your Streams and Productions Instances if you plan to use your Cluster over multiple days and plan to Stop the Cluster when you are not using it.
Click on the Add Instance button to create an additional Instance in your Cluster.
Adding Instances allows you to spread out your streams, recordings, and vMix sessions and save on usage. The instances will be on the same VPC or Virtual Private Cloud since they’re on the same cluster.
You can assign streams to different instances in the Stream’s Settings.
Click on the Instances drop-down menu and select the instance.
Once you are done configuring your Cluster, click Create.
If you use the Manual Cluster Setup, fill in the fields and click Save once you are done. It is the same categories that appear during the Cluster Summary, just with a slightly different UI.