FMS2 – Brief technical review

Just got some time to take a look at new Flash Media Server 2 public beta. So, lets see what it have for us.

The admin app comes with FMS2 is far much better than the previous, at least the GUI, and managed and streamlined layout. 

   

The first thing I noticed was the small download size, around 6mb. that’s great, I was thinking maybe I’ve to install JRE myself, but when it downloaded, I was just surprised to see there was no JAVA there, its pure VC. This means better performance on windows machines and much more advancements in future. Inno Setup is used to package FMS2.

I opened up the docs and started skim through. found descriptions of many interesting new features, if you have not check the feature list before, take a look here

Here I want to let you know one feature, that I found missing in official feature list at macromedia’s website. That is FMS2 Edge Servers, here’s little description of it:

“This release of Flash Media Server introduces the concept of remote execution of applications. Flash Media Server can now run applications locally as an origin server or remotely as edge servers. Edge servers are not a different kind of Flash Media Server. They have simply been configured to run applications remotely.”

In simple words, FMS2 Edge Server is a proxy server between client FMS2 application server, or FMS2 <> FMS2. The FMS2 docs describe it well, and also take brief look at its advantages.

FMS2 also features standard log file format for its access and other internal logs. So you can now analyze the server’s logs with your favorite log analyzing software.

Ok, I finished up with docs, now time to take a look at the installation directory. In the modules folder I found two folders, one named codecs, and other streams. streams folder have same almost files we found in FlashComm,

In the codecs folder, there are two files, 

• G711.dll – this is a name of codec used for VoIP (Voice over IP) more description about G.711 codec can found here
• Screenshare.dll – as name describes, it’s a screensharing codec.

To me, both of them are quite interesting, especially G.711, I am just keen to learn more about it, and how it can be used in FMS2 applications. It’s my initial guess that FMS2 will allow us to write applications that will be VoIP enabled just like Breeze do. Or maybe macromedia will keep it secret.

FMS2 public beta comes without any sample applications, so we’ll have to write our own apps to test its new features. If I get time later, I’ll write another review highlighting and using its new features.

// chall3ng3r //