Overview of Physical Setup

The physical deployment of the Kaltura platform is flexible and should be tailored according to the size and applicative needs of the specific site deployment.  For optimal resource utilization as well as security reasons, Kaltura platform deployment should be separated to a front-end layer and a back-end layer.

Sample Deployment Architecture

The following diagram illustrates a sample deployment architecture:

Virtualization

All server components listed in this section can be set on a physical machine or run on top of a virtualization infrastructure. Kaltura provides a standard VMware image to be deployed and run on a VMware ESXi Hypervisor setup. In this case dedicated hardware should be VMWare ESXi compatible.

Standard Setup Sizes

The following sections describe Kaltura’s recommendation for required hardware to be set for initial setup of an instance of the Kaltura platform. Specific site assessment can be made by Kaltura’s engineering and IT teams upon request.

Small - Single Server Setup

Single server setup may be suitable in the following cases, all assuming low traffic and CPU utilization:

• Small deployment of a Kaltura Community Edition instance.
• Platform deployment dedicated for providing limited usage video capabilities to a CMS/LMS platform while using Kaltura CMS/LMS extensions
• Platform deployment used for development or platform evaluation purposes.

In this setup, all required components are deployed on one server. Document conversion module and workflow cannot be utilized in this topology.

Medium - Distributed Site Setup

This physical setup is suitable as an initial setup for small to medium-size deployments of the Kaltura platform, that are expected to serve medium to high traffic/streaming volume and medium to high number of video uploads and transcoding operations. With growth in service utilization this initial setup can be scaled up as needed, to add the required server type (e.g. additional transcoding servers, additional database servers for replications, additional front end server etc).

Large - Full Distributed Site Setup

This physical setup may be suitable as an initial setup for large-size deployments of a Kaltura platform, that are expected to serve high traffic/streaming volume and high number of video uploads and transcoding needs. With any growth in service utilization this initial setup can be scaled up as needed, to add the required server type (for example, additional transcoding servers, additional database replication server, additional front end server and others).

This setup may include the following servers:

Multiple Data-Centers Site Setup

For enabling full redundancy and better performance for end users, utilization of multiple data centers may be needed. The geographic location of the data center should be chosen according to the geo- location distribution of the end users.

The synchronization of multiple data centers should be performed on both database and storage. For database synchronization a native MySQL Master-Master replication can be utilized.

For media files synchronization, a batch process can copy media items from one datacenter to the other datacenter, in order to maintain full online redundancy. The following diagram illustrates the architecture of a multi-datacenter setup of the Kaltura Platform.

Self-Streaming Considerations

In most cases, when planning for a new deployment of the Kaltura online video platform, a use of external CDN functionality is recommended. When this is not possible and/or not required, it is recommended to add additional front-end hardware to be dedicated for playback streaming.

Kaltura recommends the following addition to site setup in such cases:

Kaltura eCDN Plus is the newest addition to Kaltura’s wide range of deployment options – including on-premise, hybrid, and full SaaS deployment. It is based on the robust Kaltura API and leverages streaming technology by Wowza Media Systems as well. Kaltura eCDN Plus is tightly integrated with Kaltura’s market-leading video products, such as the company’s CorporateTube video portal, and integrations with social business platforms (SharePoint, IBM Connections, and Jive), as well as Kaltura’s products for the education market (including integrations with Blackboard, Sakai, Moodle, Desire2Learn, and Canvas) providing a seamless user experience, and centralized management and control.

Additional Scalability Considerations

The following aspects should be taken into account as a basis for a scale-up decision: