SimplyLive

SimplyLive AWS Drivers & Storage

Drivers 

Both backend and client instances require Nvidia GRID GPU drivers. It is recommended to use the latest driver available unless otherwise indicated in the package release notes. For manual installation, follow Option 3 of the AWS documentation: 

AWS Documentation on Installing Nvidia Drivers 

Storage 

The SimplyLive production suite backend demands high storage performance to support its continuous real-time processes, particularly for the loop record functionality. This necessitates the use of RAID storage spanning multiple disks to achieve the required storage bandwidth. 

Benchmarks conducted on various AWS Elastic Block Store (EBS), gp3 volumes provides best price-to-performance ratio. 

For backend loop record storage, it is recommended to use: 

5 x EBS gp3 volumes with 1,000 MiB/s throughput and 16,000 IOPS. 

In certain scenarios (refer to the dimensioning chapter), it may be advisable to add 3 more drives, bringing the total to 8 drives. 

Loop record storage uses a proprietary data format which requires a formatting process when the disks are used for the first time. 

On multiple disks, loop record data blocks are 8 megabytes. 
Example with an aggregated gp3 storage of 1TB. 
1 terabytes = 1048576 megabytes / 8 megabytes = 131072 x 0.90 = 117964,8 -> 118000 blocks. 

Hereunder an approximate content duration according video format based on the current typical workflows used in the cloud.

Video format 

5 x 4TB 

8 x 4TB 

720p50 

8-bit 

194 

340 

720p5994 

8-bit 

166 

290 

1080i50 

8-bit 

194 

340 

1080i5994 

8-bit 

166 

290 

1080p50 

8-bit 

105 

183 

1080p5994 

8-bit 

88 

155 

1080p50 

10-bit 

76 

134 

1080p5994 

10-bit 

64 

112 

Other storage configurations and reference recording capacities based on storage offered in Riedel supplied COTS hardware servers are available in Backend Recording Capacity

Do not mount these drives at operating system level 

In Disk Management Tools, exclude these disks during the Initialize disk startup window. 

If a backend instance is stopped and there is no need to retain content (clips), detaching and deleting the volumes from the instance can help reduce costs. A format must be done in this case. 

AWS Documentation on EBS Volume Lifecycle