I come from windows enviroment and not really familiar with Mac,but a colleague would like to know, what server to purchase to setup for 500mac users for streaming video and youtube? Any advice would be appreciated

I think there would be more to this than just the server.

Your network would also need some attention.

what are you planning to do exactly?

Apple make their own servers X Server (http://www.apple.com/server/)

you can also run X Server in an VMWare environment - this could save on hardware costs.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

The real question would be streaming from where?

Because a server is not likely to help at all when streaming from YouTube .

For that you need a fairly robust Internet connection with quite the large bandwidth and an infrastructure that will allow you to maintain the throughput without bottlenecking would be the first thing to setup.

Likely a well set up gigabit Ethernet network, with equally robust routers to handle that amount of traffic. Would not suggest wifi for this. Also you'll have to consider subnets or IPv6 when setting up, as standard IPv4 networks would top off at 255 devices.

Not sure where the server fits, unless you are planning to also store video on the server to stream to the network.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

> as standard IPv4 networks would top off at 255 devices

Cough......

Perhaps you mean a Class C/24 network would (254 addresses) a Class C/16 would be 65534 network addresses.

ACSS - SME
General Geek

You beat me to it

Quote:

Because a server is not likely to help at all when streaming from YouTube.

Word

Does YouToobz use that much bandwidth would be my first question vis-a-vis internet connection requirements. I honestly don't have a feeling for that.

This question is the perfect example of not providing hardly any background information that would help to give some perspective.

If I was given this project as a consultant, my first recommendation would be "get rid of the Macs". That was a joke.

Ok,What would is the recommendation to set up 500 enduser mac enviorment and what server to purchase?
What should the infrastrure be and bandwith recommendation. The site will heavily use online training, such as live streaming

Quote:

Does YouToobz use that much bandwidth would be my first question vis-a-vis internet connection requirements. I honestly don't have a feeling for that.

Depends on what is being streamed, and how many people are streaming different things.

Obviously a single low quality video will not require as much bandwidth, to stream, than 500 HD 1080p videos at the same time. Do the math.

Quote:

Ok,What would is the recommendation to set up 500 enduser mac enviorment and what server to purchase?
What should the infrastrure be and bandwith recommendation. The site will heavily use online training, such as live streaming

What is the server meant to do? Streaming from youtube would be done directly through the internet connection, with no intervention of a server.

Is the Server supposed to hold more video files that are meant to be streamed?

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

Ok, so someone said "do the math" and I say, "what math - what's the equation?". So here's something good to look at:

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Calculating-bandwidth-requirements-HD-video-79284.S.72598450

Also, still not enough info from the OP.
1. Are the videos going to be random videos all the time or the same ones used by all users
2. Different videos each day/week
3. Any stored locally or all direct from youtube
4. The quality of videos being viewed, High Def vs. Low Def makes a huge difference.

If the same videos are being used, some form of caching or local storage should be used vs. playing them directly from internet bandwidth EACH time.
Taken from: http://www.whibb.com/youtube-bandwidth-requirement.html
"Also, if you are hosting a Linux server running on Squid proxy server then you should have a look at open source cachevideo plugin which will help you to cache your videos on the local storage to save a lot of bandwidth on your network."

So, did I answer the question. No, because it depends on whether you could shift the burden from a constant streaming based solely on your internet connection vs. cached copies of videos on a Windows/Mac/Linux server.

RE: "do the math" - Well, I was never good at math but my instincts tell me that 500 computers (be they Windoz or MACs) is well beyond the do-it-yourself scope where you should solicit free advice.

A good consultant or two is needed to determine exactly what the plans and needs are. As several have already noted, this is much more than "which server to buy" and involves infrastructure issues as well as "exfrastructure" details.

The server will have to host the username and passord for account purposes. The network will be used for School system and they are only allowed to use mac in the classroom.. This is from the ground up project.

I didn't mean "do the math" literally. It was more a question of having an idea of the required bandwidth to stream 500 HD videos without lag or choppiness.

I wasn't really expecting anyone to do an actual calculation to figure it out. Nor was I suggesting a simple calculation would tell you what you needed.

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Phil AKA Vacunita
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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

Quote:

I didn't mean "do the math" literally

Vacunita - I knew that you didn't, but I actually think you hit the nail on the head and there IS a formula somewhere to figure this out and thus it really is just math (algebra). I think you were right that it's not a SIMPLE equation.
The main variables are:

Number of users = X
Number of videos/minute = Y
X x Y = total number of videos/minute

Definition level of videos translated into MB/minute/video for adequate streaming = Z

XY x Z

Assuming here that all are streamed directly and none are cached + they are all simultaneous for the biggest possible load (all stop and start at the same time).

I would honestly say this is where you need to call a professional infrastructure person that has experience in this type of load - both for internal network and internet connection. I'm pretty sure that caching would be highly desirable if possible.

For classroom applications, there are apps that allow the teacher to send the same image to all classroom PCs, so there's only one feed from the source. The same app can be used to allow the students to work on individual projects (I supported the PLATO learning environment), and the teacher to see thumbnails of the whole class, and bring up an individual pupil's screen on hers. The OP needs to talk to other educators currently supporting classroom networks for recommendations, best practices, and available apps.

Fred Wagner