Contents

Introduction

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Update scenarios

• Single server
• Multiple server—centralized
• Multiple server—decentralized

Single server

Multiple server—centralized

Multiple server—decentralized

• Configure a spare computer to match the one you have just updated and then ship it to the remote site.
• Update one server and then use a file-copy utility to copy the digital media content, publishing point structure, logging directories, and so on to all other computers that you are updating. This is useful when your servers mirror each other; it is not a good idea when you have different configurations on different servers.
• Provide detailed update instructions to your remote data center staff. These instructions should include all of the requisite publishing point and security settings, directory structures, logging attributes, and so on.

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System requirements

• Windows Media Services service. This service allows you to stream digital media content to clients over an intranet or the Internet.
• Windows Media Services snap-in. This snap-in enables you to manage and configure Windows Media Services using Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

• Windows Media Services Administrator for the Web. This component provides support for remote, browser-based administration of your Windows Media server. Selecting this component installs a set of Active Server Pages (ASP) for use with Internet Information Services (IIS). When installed, the Windows Media Services Administration site appears in the IIS Web sites folder. Windows Media Services Administrator for the Web may also be installed separately from the Windows Media Services service.
• Multicast and Advertisement Logging Agent. This component enables you to record statistics from players that connect to content through a Web server. Selecting this component installs an extension to the Internet Information Services Web server that collects the logging information and writes it to a log file in the location you specify.

• Although Windows Media Services does not contain any new features in Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2), we recommend that you update the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2003 (SP2) for the latest updates and security enhancements to the current Windows Server 2003 operating system. Windows Server 2003 (SP2) tightens security of your Windows Media server and improves its performance and reliability.
• Windows Media Services is not included in Windows Server 2008 and must be installed separately. For more information about installing Windows Media Services 2008, see Updating the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2008.

Windows Media Services service and Windows Media Services snap-in

Windows Media Services Administrator for the Web

• To function, the Windows Media Administration site must be able to install cookies on the remote client computer, so be sure that the client browser is using a security option that supports cookies.
• To provide security for this Web site, see "Securing the Windows Media Administration site" in Windows Media Services Help.
• ASP documents are not compatible with the file allocation table (FAT32) file structure. If you are having difficulty viewing Windows Media Services Administrator for the Web, ensure that your file system does not use the FAT32 architecture.

Multicast and Advertisement Logging Agent

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Updating the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2003

About migration

• Unicast publishing points in Windows Media Services 4.1 become on-demand publishing points in this version.
• Stations in version 4.1 become broadcast publishing points.
• Programs in version 4.1 become playlists and are copied to a new folder, %systemdrive%\WMPlaylists.
• Streams in version 4.1 become playlist elements.
• MSBD-based URLs in version 4.1 become HTTP-based URLs.
• Multicast file transfers are no longer supported, so they are not migrated to this version of Windows Media Services.
• The On-Line Presentation Broadcast service that provides integration with Microsoft PowerPoint is no longer supported, so it is not migrated.
• Distribution authentication user IDs and passwords are not migrated.
• Any security settings that have been configured on the publishing point source directories in version 4.1 are migrated. The migrated security settings are modified to allow the NETWORK SERVICE account to have read permissions for the source directories of the migrated publishing points. For more information about rights used by Windows Media Services, see "Understanding rights" in Windows Media Services Help.

Configuration elements that are migrated

Publishing points that point to directories

Publishing points that point to publishing points

Publishing points and stations with the same name

Stations and programs not associated

• A program will lose its association with a station only if the station is deleted after the program is created.

Publishing points that point to local stations

• A new playlist file is created, using the name of the program, and the playlist file is saved to a new directory (%systemroot%\WMPlaylists\Program_Name.wsx).
• Each stream within the program becomes a media element within the playlist, and all properties associated with the stream become attributes of the media element.
• References to MSBD in the source URL are replaced by HTTP.
• If two programs exist for a single station:
  • A new playlist file is created for each program, using the name of the program, and the playlist file is saved to a new directory (%systemroot%\WMPlaylists\Program_Name.wsx).
  • A broadcast publishing point is created for the station and the path points to the playlist file that was created for the first program.
• Two broadcast publishing points are created:
  • The version 4.1 station name becomes the name of the first broadcast publishing point, which points to the playlist path. The station properties are migrated to the publishing point.
  • The version 4.1 publishing point name becomes the name of the second broadcast publishing point, which points to the first publishing point.

• The upgrade process only covers the migration of Windows Media Services. Any remote servers and encoders must be reconfigured manually to use the HTTP protocol.
• If you were using a port other than 80 to stream content from another server or an encoder, you will need to update the URLs in the playlist to reference the appropriate port number. For example if you streamed welcome.asf over port 8008 on your 4.1 server and your original URL was msbd://server1/welcome.asf the upgrade process will result in the URL http://server1/welcome.asf. However, that will not work if the content is not available on the default HTTP port, so you must modify the reference to http://server1:8008/welcome.asf.

Publishing points that point to remote sources

• The upgrade process includes only the migration of Windows Media Services. Any remote servers and encoders must be reconfigured manually to use the HTTP protocol.

Stations with no publishing points

• A new playlist file is created using the name of the program, and the playlist file is saved to a new directory (%systemroot%\WMPlaylists\Program_Name.wsx).
• Each stream within the program becomes a media element within the playlist, and all associated stream properties become attributes of the media element
• References to MSBD in the source URL are replaced by HTTP.
• If two programs exist for a single station:
  • A new playlist file is created for each program using the name of the program, and the playlist file is saved to a new directory (%systemroot%\WMPlaylists\Program_Name.wsx).
  • A broadcast publishing point is created for the station, and the path is set to point to the playlist file that was created for the first program.
• A broadcast publishing point is created. The existing station name becomes the name of the broadcast publishing point, which points to the playlist path.

Publishing point security

• In the Windows Media Services 4.1 access control list (ACL), checking could be either enabled or disabled. The default installation of Windows Media Services enables the WMS Publishing Points ACL plug-in without regard to the ACL setting used with the previous version as a means of keeping your server secure until you have configured it.

Configuration elements that are not migrated

• Security accounts and groups. The NetShow Administrators or Windows Media Administrators local groups and the NetShowServices local user accounts are not removed during the upgrade process. To ensure maximum security, decide whether the accounts are still applicable, and then make them unavailable or remove them if they are no longer in use.
• Access control lists (ACLs). ACLs that are associated with publishing points are not migrated. However the information is not removed from the system registry. If you want, you can remove the ACL information manually from the registry, by removing the following registry subkeys:

  \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NetShow\AccessLists
  \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NetShow\AccessLists\AllowDistribution
  \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NetShow\AccessLists\AllowUnicastClients
  \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NetShow\AccessLists\DisallowDistribution
  \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NetShow\AccessLists\DisallowUnicastClients

  If you want to reassign ACLs, you must enable the WMS Publishing Points ACL Authorization plug-in.
• Authorization and authentication plug-ins. These plug-ins are not removed during migration. You can manually remove them after the upgrade is finished.
• IP access lists. The list of IP addresses that you have configured to grant or deny access to your server are not migrated. You can recreate these lists by using the WMS IP Address Authorization plug-in properties dialog box.
• Programs. All programs are migrated to playlists regardless of whether they contained streams, with the exception of programs containing multicast file transfer streams. You can remove the empty playlists if you choose.
• Configuration folders. The following folders and any files contained in them are not removed:
  • %systemroot%\System32\Windows Media\Server\ASDB
  • %systemroot%\System32\Windows Media\Server\ASDB\NSP
  • %systemroot%\System32\Windows Media\Server\Station Data
  You can manually remove the folders if you choose.
• Distribution Authentication. If you enabled server authentication proxy settings in Windows Media Services 4.1, the name of the proxy server used to validate authentication credentials will be migrated during the upgrade. However, you must manually enter the user name and password used with the proxy server in the property sheet of the WMS Network Data Source plug-in. You must specify the user name and password for each protocol that uses the proxy server to connect to a network data source. For more information, see "To configure the WMS Network Data Source plug-in" in Windows Media Services Help.
• On-Line Broadcast. This service, which provides integration with Microsoft PowerPoint, is not migrated. If you are running programs that require this service, you must continue to use Windows Media Services 4.1 on a compatible operating system, such as Windows 2000 Server.
• Windows Media File Transfer Services. This service is not migrated. If you are running programs that require this service, you must continue to use Windows Media Services 4.1 on a compatible operating system, such as Windows 2000 Server.
• Third party plug-ins. Third-party plug-ins used with Windows Media Services 4.1 cannot be used with the new version of Windows Media Services. Several software developers have created new plug-ins for this version. Check with the plug-in developers to find out whether new plug-ins are available.
• Incompatible publishing points. If a publishing point or station on your Windows Media Services 4.1 server has a name that exceeds 260 characters, it will not be migrated.

• Incorrectly editing the registry may severely damage your system. Before making changes to the registry, you should back up any valued data on the computer.

How to upgrade the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2003

1. Run the Windows Server 2003 upgrade wizard and configure your server as necessary. The upgrade wizard will upgrade Windows Media Services as well.
2. Verify that all hardware drivers are up to date.
3. After the wizard is complete, open Windows Media Services and check your publishing points, playlists, logging directories, security settings, and so on. Make any adjustments that are necessary.
4. If you are using earlier versions of Windows Media Encoder, update your encoder configuration files to use the HTTP protocol rather than MSBD.
5. If you have .asx files that specify either mmst:// or mmsu:// as the connection protocol and you plan to support Windows Media Player 9 Series or later, then update the .asx files to use mms://. The Player will then negotiate the best connection protocol based on network conditions.
6. Run Windows Media Load Simulator to ensure the stability of your server and to determine the maximum stream capacity. Also, Windows Media Services 9 Series has higher memory requirements than version 4.1. To determine whether you need to add more RAM, monitor your CPU and memory utilization during the load simulation test. During the test, consider:
   • Finding the maximum number of clients your server can handle by simulating connections until your server goes down, refuses connections, or gives some other indication that it is overloaded. You will want to know its connection limit.
   • Running a 24-hour load test with 65 percent of the maximum client load you determined in the previous step to identify any hardware malfunctions or failures before you put the server into production.
7. During the load simulator test, check your performance counter readings to determine peak performance points or the need for additional hardware. For example:
   • %Processor Time is the percentage of CPU that is busy executing a non-idle thread. If the server is consistently at a level of 85 percent or higher then it may indicate the need for a faster CPU.
   • Current Late Read Rate is a disk read operation that takes significantly longer than expected to complete. If this number is greater than 0 then it may indicate that the disk drive is too slow for the load.
   • Current Late Send Rate is a disk write operation that indicates when the server is unable to send out data at the rate that is expected. A sustained late send rate could mean that you need additional CPU.
   • Total Stream Errors represents the number of stream data packets discarded by the server. Discarding occurs when the CPU cannot keep up with the demand for data. This typically occurs in conjunction with late reads and can indicate too much network or disk traffic.
   • Total UDP Resend Requests indicates the number of times a client has requested that the server resend packets because they were not received. Resend requests can be high when the server cannot reliably send UDP packets or if there is some network overload that is preventing packets from being delivered.
   • Total UDP Resends Sent should be similar in number to UDP Resend Requests. If this number is significantly lower than UDP Resend Requests then it may indicate that the server load is too high.
   See Windows Media Load Simulator Help for more information on these and other performance counters.
8. Adjust your server limits based on your load simulation and performance monitor findings. Some of the limit settings were not available in version 4.1, so you might want to experiment with them.
9. If necessary, use the Distributed File System (DFS) and File Replication Service to copy content from other servers or backup media to the new server. Any content resident on the computer before the upgrade was not moved or deleted during the upgrade.
10. Evaluate the new features of Windows Media Services 9 Series to determine how they will work in your environment. Also make sure you understand how to complete familiar tasks using the new user interface.
11. Back up the server.
12. Put your server running Windows Media Services 9 Series into production.

Licensing Windows Media Services in Windows Server 2003

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Updating the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2008

About Windows Media Services 2008

• The Server Core installation option does not install non-essential services and applications and provides base server functionality without any extra overhead. While the Server Core installation option is a fully-functioning mode of the operating system that supports one of the designated roles, it does not include the server graphic user interface (GUI). Because Server Core installations include only what is required for the designated roles, a Server Core installation will typically require less maintenance and fewer updates, because there are fewer components to manage. In other words, since there are fewer programs and components installed and running on the server, there are fewer attack vectors exposed to the network, resulting in a reduced attack surface. If a security flaw or vulnerability is discovered in a component that is not installed, a patch is not required. For more information, see Server Core Installation Option of Windows Server 2008 Step-By-Step Guide.

How to update the Windows Media server platform to Windows Server 2008

Licensing Windows Media Services in Windows Server 2008

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For more information

• Optimizing Windows Media Services. Provides a technical overview of the performance and scalability of Windows Media Services. It describes common Windows Media Services performance issues, limitations, and performance monitoring techniques. You can use the information in this document to estimate the hardware requirements for your Windows Media server network, based upon your estimated audience size and the bandwidth consumed by the digital media content that you want to deliver. In general, you can assume scalability increases nearly linearly with increases in RAM and CPU.

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