Audio4 server problems today

[richtidd]

Our audio4 host is offline again.

This means those trying to connect to feeds on this server cannot.

Feeds will show online but listeners cannot connect.

Lindsey is working on it & we hope to have it back up soon.

 

[blantonl]

It's back up...

 

[911scanner]

So I have a question based on the "audio 4" issues for the past few days.

I'm under the assumption that this is just a "get the bugs worked out" issue. But being as it has happened a few times over the last few days, for the moment it has become commonplace.

Keeping that in mind, and also remembering the fact that the new feed provider status rules have been implemented, do you forum folks have some sort of a "delay" set on the membership privileges vs. feed status? Or does the premium membership get shut down right away if the feed goes offline?

I would think that, based on the events of the last few days with audio 4, it would behoove you guys to have some sort of a delay in place for the premium membership cutoff. When it isn't caused by the end user, they should not be the ones to suffer.

Not a criticism, just thinking outside of the box (since my feed is on the ubiquitous audio 4).


MM

 

[blantonl]

Couple points here:

1) audio4 is a relay server, not a receiver server, so your feed actually remains online (just no one could listen to it when it went down). The minute your feed stops broadcasting to us, the premium subscription drops. In all of these cases your feeds continued to broadcast to us (and be archived), so there was no impact.

2) We've implemented extensive monitoring and restarting procedures to prevent this from happening again. If, again for some reason the server dies, it will not remain down for more than 30 seconds and it will be automatically brought back up and I'll be paged.

We're not sure why this issue is limited to audio4 - it's not the server crashing but the process which relays the feeds which is crashing. We use the same standard software and configuration across all 4 of our audio servers, so this issue is perplexing. But, from this point forward there should be minimal to no impact to listeners since we're proactively addressing the issue now.

Thanks,

 

[911scanner]

Thanks for your consideration & explanation.


MM

 

[badman35]

So what server software is being used? Is it windows or linux based? And how do you have the servers setup are they virtual servers on 1 hardware base or on several hardware bases?

 

[GordonE]

So what server software is being used? Is it windows or linux based? And how do you have the servers setup are they virtual servers on 1 hardware base or on several hardware bases?

The audio infrastructure consists of 6 Linux boxes with 4 of them running Icecast (the other two are used for audio archiving) which are running on virtual machine instances in Amazon's EC2 cloud.

 

[badman35]

The audio infrastructure consists of 6 Linux boxes with 4 of them running Icecast (the other two are used for audio archiving) which are running on virtual machine instances in Amazon's EC2 cloud.

I'm glad to see that RR uses linux as it's base OS but why not use .ogg. I understand that you want the widest user base and the MP3 format is widely in use. But I like the open source formats for simply because they are free and open and not closed source based. So all that being said is their any way that i could switch my feed over to the "ogg" format instead?? I'm forced right now to use the "MP3" format and I do not like it "Now don't get me wrong if i must use that format then i will just to use your site" it would save me a lot of time on my end {'I convert your mp3's to ogg on my pc} for my feed. But i am so happy that RR uses Linux keep up the good work all of you feed providers included....

 

[GordonE]

Nope, we only want to support the mp3 format so that the streams can be played on as many devices and by as many players as possible.

For your situation, you could run two encoders, one to send an mp3 formatted stream to RadioReference.com and another to send a .ogg formatted stream to your own server.

 

[badman35]

I'm am not using oddcast software that is on the software feed dl i am using scannercast on my squads pc till i get the server back up and running at full speed. But i am glad that you suggested that I was going to do just that but on icecast cleint of my own when our server gets back up and running. And as always keep up the good work on RR..