Squeezebox Server on Amazon AWS/EC2/EBS

[saieva]

Greetings,

I have Squeezebox Server v7.4 running on Amazon's cloud (on an EC2 Fedora Core 8 Linux image) with EBS for persistent storage and securely streaming data back to Squeezebox devices on my home network over the public Internet. With some Unix scripting an entire Squeezebox Server setup can be recreated from a base Fedora AMI in about 2-3 minutes. I'm using rsync to copy music data to an EBS volume and an Amazon Elastic IP for static IP addressing. AWS Security Groups are used to keep a running instance secure. I've recently converted the setup to run on an Amazon Spot Instance in order to reduce the hourly cost for running the server on AWS.

I am interested in collaborating with someone (or a small group) who would also like to run their Squeezebox Server on AWS in order to recreate, document, and improve the automation for the setup. Ultimately our work together will be shared with others.

If you're interested you'll need to be Ok with the following:

o willing to setup an AWS account and incur usage charges for running your Squeezebox Server and maintaining your data.
o have prior experience with Linux / Unix systems environments.
o willing to learn the AWS APIs and developer tools (I can help to get you started).
o must have prior programming experience with scripting languages (such as the bash shell, Perl, PHP, etc) and experience with higher-level programming languages (such as Java, C/C++, C#, etc).
o willing to work on documentation for the solution so it can be shared with others interested in pursuing a similar arrangement for running Squeezebox Server.
o prior experience running a project on SourceForge, Unfuddle, or similar site would be helpful (since that's something I've never done).

Regards,

Sal.
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Salvatore Saieva

[nowork]

Brilliant and Seditious

Hi,

Sounds great. Can you give us an estimation of monthly costs for 80GB of music and 24x7 streaming at 192Kb?

Thanks,

[saieva]

Currently, Amazon charges 10 cents/GB/month for stored data (on an Elastic Block Store/EBS volume); so 80GB would be $8/month.

Compute time, for a single vCPU Linux/Unix system is 8.5 cents/hour. However, Amazon just released a spot market for available compute capacity and a Linux system in the Eastern region is currently running 2.6 cents/hour. That would be somewhere in the range of approx $19-62/month for compute time depending on the spot price. (I converted to running SqueezeCenter Server on a spot instance at the lower cost.)

There are also fees for I/Os on Amazon's infrastructure. Amazon is waiving inbound IO fees until June (to encourage people to move data onto their cloud product). Outbound IOs are billed at 17 cents/GB.

I have a 50GB data volume for music and I'm estimating about $25-35/month to run the server on Amazon's infrastructure, and I can probably lower that cost further with more automation that would shutdown the instance when I'm not listening to music.

Here are the details of Amazon's pricing plans:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

Sal.
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Salvatore Saieva

[nowork]

A bit spendy without others

Hi,

I reiterate my compliments, brilliant and seditious.

However, without a group to help defray the ongoing costs, I find the "entry fee" to be a bit high.

I hope you will be able to attract a few participants to share the costs. (of course the more you get, the lower the costs).

Good Luck!

[DaveWr]

Interesting, but this is what Logitech should do.

It might be a little more robust than MySB, with options for users to store their library.

Dave

[JJZolx]

(of course the more you get, the lower the costs).

Not to mention the benefits of combining a couple dozen music libraries where you might end up with 100,000 or more albums.

[mark-e-mark]

Librarian

Not to mention the benefits of combining a couple dozen music libraries where you might end up with 100,000 or more albums.

Now I'm really interested. How would sharing music libraries work, or would it be only one library with several depositors? Would we need a librarian to manage it?

[snarlydwarf]

Now I'm really interested. How would sharing music libraries work, or would it be only one library with several depositors? Would we need a librarian to manage it?

I bet that would get you a takedown order if it was found.

It doesn't appear to me to be what the OP was talking about, either: making it easier for others to install their -own- instance on AWS.

(Though, for me, spending $100/month to have amazon store my music and stream it back to me is a nonstarter..)

[JJZolx]

I bet that would get you a takedown order if it was found.

It doesn't appear to me to be what the OP was talking about, either: making it easier for others to install their -own- instance on AWS.

(Though, for me, spending $100/month to have amazon store my music and stream it back to me is a nonstarter..)

Someone mentioned going in as a group to defray costs. If you did that, then I'd imagine everyone uses the same instance of the server and uploads their libraries to that instance. Thus the 100,000 albums. And, yes, if the RIAA got wind of it, it surely wouldn't be pretty.

I can only see this being attractive if you wanted to serve the content to multiple locations. Uploading the library to a server only to have it served to your home network makes very little sense.

[fragfutter]

it's not clear to me why i would do this on amazon cloud. Running a fully fledged dedicated Server (i7-920, 8GB Ram, 2x750GB Disk, 10Mbit flat internet) in Germany is 50.- EUR including taxes (-> 72USD). And i could run a lot more then squeezebox on it. And this is not the cheapest hoster. i could go for some smaller machines and stay below 40USD. Or a virtual server (which would need 80GB diskspace, this is a bit rare).

[saieva]

I have multiple locations and multiple Squeezebox Servers running and it's some amount of effort to keep the servers in-sync at each location. I'm using iTunes to catalog the music on a Mac and rsync to sync the iTunes library with AWS. So now I have a single music store on AWS for streaming to the different locations and I can decommission the servers/hardware at each location.

There is the http://www.mp3tunes.com/ service, which I haven't tried, but I believe is compatible with the http streaming interface on Slimdevices. 50GB of storage is about $40/year which may be more cost effective in some situations.

My intention is to get the price down by automating the AWS server shutdown/startup processes and not run an AWS instance when I'm not listening to music (like when I'm sleeping, at work, on vacation, etc).

I believe there is an opportunity to aggregate/share music libraries with this type of centralized streaming server approach, using social networking concepts that are being developed in systems like last.fm, etc, and I imagine the issues you point out are all valid and would have to be worked-out appropriately. There is also the question of whether Squeezebox Server is the right technology for large-scale streaming of aggregated libraries of any substantial volume. I can say that a 1-vCPU Linux instance on AWS works fine for my personal use to multiple locations with multiple Slimdevices.

Sal.
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Salvatore Saieva

[JJZolx]

My intention is to get the price down by automating the AWS server shutdown/startup processes and not run an AWS instance when I'm not listening to music (like when I'm sleeping, at work, on vacation, etc).

Shutting down the server really makes a difference in your hosting costs? Do they also charge for processing used? I would have thought disk space and bandwidth are by far the largest expense. Overall, this sounds like it would be a fairly pricey approach to Squeezeboxing.

I believe there is an opportunity to aggregate/share music libraries with this type of centralized streaming server approach, using social networking concepts that are being developed in systems like last.fm, etc, and I imagine the issues you point out are all valid and would have to be worked-out appropriately.

No, it's very unlikely that you're going to solve the licensing problems of aggregating libraries. On a scale of something like last.fm? Perhaps, but it would be a huge project. You want to tackle that just to save a couple bucks on your hosting costs???

There is also the question of whether Squeezebox Server is the right technology for large-scale streaming of aggregated libraries of any substantial volume.

Volume has little to do with it. Squeezebox Server has a very narrow application - that of streaming to Squeezeboxen and a couple of never completed SB emulators.

[andynormancx]

Shutting down the server really makes a difference in your hosting costs? Do they also charge for processing used? I would have thought disk space and bandwidth are by far the largest expense. Overall, this sounds like it would be a fairly pricey approach to Squeezeboxing.

Processing time on Amazon is a lot higher than disk space or bandwidth charges, as shown in the costs listed earlier in the thread.

The cost of electricity (in the UK) to run my large server 24/7 costs more than those Amazon hosting costs. Though admittedly it is a big old server and I could/should be running something more energy/cost efficient by now.

[pablolie]

I was thinking about this this very morning and of course saw that someone had done so 11 months earlier in here.

Has this effort gone further? Any updates?

Amazon now has introduced a free pricing tier that may make this quite attractive. *And* a fun experiment.

I also see that with 10.10 Ubuntu Server had the ability to run in EC2, which ought to make this straight-forward... or not? Has anyone tried it yet?

[vw195]

This might also be a good solution for those who don't want to run a local sbs, but also wants to use plugins.