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Streaming Endpoints (Origin) in Azure Media Services

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In Microsoft Azure Media Services, a Streaming Endpoint represents a dynamic (just-in-time) packaging and origin service that can deliver your live and on-demand content directly to a client player app, using one of the common streaming media protocols (HLS or DASH). The Streaming Endpoint also provides dynamic (just-in-time) encryption to industry-leading DRMs.

When you create a Media Services account, a default streaming endpoint is created for you in a stopped state. You can create more streaming endpoints can be created under the account (see Quotas and limits).

Note

To start streaming videos, you need to start the Streaming Endpoint from which you want to stream the video. You're only billed when your streaming endpoint is in the running state.

Make sure to also review the article Dynamic packaging.

Naming convention

The host name format of the streaming URL is {servicename}-{accountname}-{regionname}.streaming.media.azure.net, where servicename = the streaming endpoint name or the live event name.

When using the default streaming endpoint, servicename is omitted so the URL is: {accountname}-{regionname}.streaming.azure.net.

Limitations

  • The streaming endpoint name has a max value of 24 characters.
  • The name should follow this regex pattern: ^[a-zA-Z0-9]+(-*[a-zA-Z0-9])*$.

Types

There are two Streaming Endpoint types: Standard (preview) and Premium. The type is defined by the number of scale units (scaleUnits) you allocate for the streaming endpoint.

The maximum streaming unit limit is usually 10. Contact Azure support to raise the limit for your account.

The following table describes the Premium and Standard streaming endpoint types.

Type Scale units Description
Standard 0 The default streaming endpoint is a Standard type. You can change it to the Premium type by adjusting the scaleUnits.
Premium > 0 Premium streaming endpoints are suitable for advanced workloads and providing dedicated and scalable bandwidth capacity. You can move to a Premium type by adjusting the scaleUnits (streaming units). The scaleUnits provides a dedicated egress capacity that you can purchase in increments of 200 Mbps. When using the Premium type, each enabled unit provides an additional bandwidth capacity to the app.

Note

For customers looking to deliver content to large internet audiences, we recommend you enable CDN on the streaming endpoint.

Comparing streaming types

Feature Standard Premium
Throughput Up to 600 Mbps and can provide a much higher effective throughput when you use CDN. 200 Mbps per streaming unit (SU). Can provide a much higher effective throughput when you use CDN.
CDN Azure CDN, third-party CDN, or no CDN. Azure CDN, third-party CDN, or no CDN.
Billing is prorated Daily Daily
Dynamic encryption Yes Yes
Dynamic packaging Yes Yes
Scale Auto scales up to the targeted throughput. Additional SUs.
IP filtering/G20/Custom host 1 Yes Yes
Progressive download Yes Yes
Resource type Shared 2 Dedicated
Recommended usage Recommended for testing and non-essential streaming scenarios. Professional usage.

1 Only used directly on the streaming endpoint when the CDN isn't enabled on the endpoint.
2 Standard streaming endpoints use a shared pool of resources.

Versions

Type StreamingEndpointVersion ScaleUnits CDN Billing
Classic 1.0 0 NA Free
Standard Streaming Endpoint (preview) 2.0 0 Yes Paid
Premium Streaming Units 1.0 > 0 Yes Paid
Premium Streaming Units 2.0 > 0 Yes Paid

Note

The SLA is only applicable to the Premium streaming endpoints and not the Standard streaming endpoints. For information on SLA, see Pricing and SLA.

Migration between types

From To Action
Classic Standard Need to opt in
Classic Premium Scale (additional streaming units)
Standard/Premium Classic Not available (If the streaming endpoint version is 1.0. Allowed to change to classic by setting the scaleunits value to "0".)
Standard (with/without CDN) Premium with the same configurations. Allowed in the started state (via Azure portal).
Premium (with/without CDN) Standard with the same configurations. Allowed in the started state (via Azure portal).
Standard (with/without CDN) Premium with the different configurations. Allowed in the stopped state (via Azure portal). Not allowed in the running state.
Premium (with/without CDN) Standard with the different configurations. Allowed in the stopped state (via Azure portal). Not allowed in the running state.
Version 1.0 with SU >= 1 with CDN Standard/Premium with no CDN Allowed in the stopped state. Not allowed in the started state.
Version 1.0 with SU >= 1 with CDN Standard with/without CDN Allowed in the stopped state. Not allowed in the started state. Version 1.0 CDN will be deleted and new one created and started.
Version 1.0 with SU >= 1 with CDN Premium with/without CDN Allowed in the stopped state. Not allowed in the started state. Classic CDN will be deleted and new one created and started.

Streaming endpoint properties

This section discusses some of the properties of streaming endpoints. For examples of how to create a new streaming endpoint and descriptions of all the properties, see Streaming endpoint.

  • accessControl - Configures the following security settings for this streaming endpoint: Akamai Signature Header Authentication keys and IP addresses that are allowed to connect to this endpoint. This property can only be set when cdnEnabled is set to false.

  • cdnEnabled - Indicates if the Azure CDN integration for this streaming endpoint is enabled (disabled by default). If you set cdnEnabled to true, the following configurations get disabled: customHostNames and accessControl.

    Not all data centers support the Azure CDN integration. To check if your data center has the Azure CDN integration available, do the following steps:

    • Try to set the cdnEnabled to true.
    • Check the returned result for the HTTP Error Code 412 (PreconditionFailed) message - "Streaming endpoint CdnEnabled property can't be set to true as CDN capability is unavailable in the current region."

    If you get this error, the data center doesn't support it. Try another data center.

  • cdnProfile - When cdnEnabled is set to true, you can also pass cdnProfile values. cdnProfile is the name of the CDN profile where the CDN endpoint point gets created. You can provide an existing cdnProfile or use a new one. If value is NULL and cdnEnabled is true, the default value "AzureMediaStreamingPlatformCdnProfile" is used. If the provided cdnProfile exists already, an endpoint gets created under it. If the profile doesn't exist, a new profile automatically gets created.

  • cdnProvider - When CDN is enabled, you can also pass cdnProvider values. cdnProvider controls which provider will be used. Presently, three values are supported - "StandardVerizon", "PremiumVerizon" and "StandardAkamai". If the value is not provided and cdnEnabled is true, use the default value "StandardVerizon".

  • crossSiteAccessPolicies - Specifies cross-site access policies for various clients. For more information, see Cross-domain policy file specification and Making a Service Available Across Domain Boundaries. The settings only apply to Smooth Streaming.

  • customHostNames - Configures a streaming endpoint to accept traffic directed to a custom host name. This property is valid for Standard and Premium streaming endpoints and can be set when cdnEnabled is false.

    • The ownership of the domain name must be confirmed by Media Services. Media Services verifies the domain name ownership with the help of the CName record that contains the Media Services account ID as a component to be added to the domain in use. For example, if you use "sports.contoso.com" as a custom host name for the streaming endpoint, configure a record for <accountId>.contoso.com to point to one of Media Services verification host names. The verification host name is composed of verifydns.<mediaservices-dns-zone>.

      Following are the expected DNS zones to be used in the verify record for different Azure regions.

      • North America, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, and Japan:

        • media.azure.net
        • verifydns.media.azure.net

      • China:

        • mediaservices.chinacloudapi.cn
        • verifydns.mediaservices.chinacloudapi.cn

    • For example, a CName record that maps "945a4c4e-28ea-45cd-8ccb-a519f6b700ad.contoso.com" to "verifydns.media.azure.net" proves that the Media Services ID "945a4c4e-28ea-45cd-8ccb-a519f6b700ad" has the ownership of the contoso.com domain, enabling any name under contoso.com to be used as a custom host name for a streaming endpoint under that account. To find the Media Service ID value, go to the Azure portal and select your Media Service account. The Account ID appears on the top right of the page.

    • If there's an attempt to set a custom host name without a proper verification of the CName record, the DNS response will fail and then be cached for some time. Once a proper record is in place, it might take some time until the cached response gets revalidated. Depending on the DNS provider for the custom domain, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to revalidate the record.

    • In addition to the CName that maps <accountId>.<parent domain> to verifydns.<mediaservices-dns-zone>, you must create another CName that maps the custom host name (like sports.contoso.com) to your Media Services Streaming Endpoint's host name (like amstest-usea.streaming.media.azure.net).

    Note

    Streaming endpoints located in the same data center can't share the same custom host name.

    Presently, Media Services does not support TLS with custom domains.

  • maxCacheAge - Overrides the default max-age HTTP cache control header set by the streaming endpoint on media fragments and on-demand manifests. The value is set in seconds.

  • resourceState - Below is the description of the states of your streaming endpoint.

    • Stopped - the initial state of a Streaming Endpoint after creation.
    • Starting - Transitioning to the running state.
    • Running - Able to stream content to the clients.
    • Scaling - the scale units are being increased or decreased.
    • Stopping: Transitioning to the stopped state.
    • Deleting: Being deleted.

  • scaleUnits - Provides a dedicated egress capacity that you can purchase in increments of 200 Mbps. If you need to move to a Premium type, adjust the value of scaleUnits.

Note

Media services will be enforcing TLS 1.2 for all requests to KeyDelivery, RESTv2, Streaming Endpoint and Live Event streaming origins. Accounts with existing TLS 1.0 or 1.1 usage will be exempt from this enforcement. If you wish to enforce TLS 1.2 for all your requests to these media services endpoints, please contact AMS support.

Why use multiple streaming endpoints?

A single streaming endpoint can stream both live and on-demand videos and most customers use only one streaming endpoint. This section explains the scenarios that might need you to use multiple streaming endpoints.

  • Each reserved unit allows for 200 Mbps of bandwidth. If you need more than 2,000 Mbps (2 Gbps) of bandwidth, use the second streaming endpoint and load balance that provides an additional bandwidth.

    CDN is the best way to achieve the scale out for streaming content. However, if you are delivering so much content that the CDN is pulling more than 2 Gbps, you can add additional streaming endpoints (origins). In this case, you would need to hand out content URLs that are balanced across the two streaming endpoints. This approach gives better caching than trying to send requests to each origin randomly (for example, via a traffic manager).

    Tip

    Usually, when the CDN is pulling more than 2 Gbps, then something might be misconfigured (for example, no origin shielding).

  • Load balancing different CDN providers - For example, you could set up the default streaming endpoint to use the Verizon CDN and create a second one to use Akamai. Now, add load balancing between the two endpoints to achieve multi-CDN balancing.

    However, the customer often does load balancing across multiple CDN providers using a single origin.

  • Streaming mixed content - Live streaming and video on-demand. The access patterns for live and on-demand content are different. The live content tends to get a lot of demand for the same content all at once. The video on-demand content (for example, a long tail archive content) has low usage on the same content. Thus, caching works very well on the live content but not as well on the long tail content.

    Consider a scenario in which your customers are mainly watching live content but are only occasionally watching on-demand content and it is served from the same streaming endpoint. The low usage of on-demand content would occupy cache space that would be better saved for the live content. In this scenario, we would recommend serving the live content from one streaming endpoint and the long tail content from another streaming endpoint. This will improve the performance of the live event content.

Scaling streaming with CDN

See the following articles:

Get help and support

You can contact Media Services with questions or follow our updates by one of the following methods: