Adobe Media Server scaling on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Question

I need to serve a live stream to more than 10K users. Checking Adobe website it says that one EC2 instance of type m2.2xlarge is able to serve to just 10K users so I've some questions:

Does CloudFront allow to more users to connect than those 10K users allowed by the EC2 instance acting as a multiplexor of the original tream?

And based on the response of the above question:

• If CloudFront allow more users to connect then, why should anyone need one m2.2xlarge EC2 instance if one with lower specs could do the same job and let CloudFront to multiplex the live stream?
• If CludFront doesn't allow more users to connect than those 10K, what kind of architecture do I need? CloudFront + ELB + 2 or more EC2 instances with AMS installed a nd connected to another small EC2 instance with AMS installed which gets the stream from the live event?

Answer 1

CloudFront acts as a caching layer, for each edge location. If the content is not available at the edge location, it connects to EC2, retrieves the data and passes it on. So as far as I know, if using CloudFront, you shouldn't need such a large EC2 instance.

I've tested this extensively with static resources, I didn't need it for live streaming yet, but the same principles should apply.

This post on the AWS website from 2012 seems to confirm my hypothesis: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/03/29/amazon-cloudfront-improves-live-streaming-support-with-adobe-fms/

So basically, as long as the EC2 instance is strong enough to stream to all CloudFront edge location simultaneously, you should be fine.