Nimble Streamer Configuration and Control Options

Nimble Streamer is a powerful and versatile media server that offers a variety of configuration and control options to meet the needs of media companies, content owners, streamers and operators of all sizes.

One of the keyways to control and monitor Nimble Streamer is through the WMSPanel web interface, which is accessible via any browser and offers a wide range of features and benefits. Using WMSPanel, you can control multiple servers from a single UI, apply settings to multiple servers simultaneously, and even grant non-admin users permissions to control instances. For added security, 2-factor authentication is supported and recommended. Setting up streaming with Nimble Streamer is made easy through the use of WMSPanel, and the platform offers a robust reporting feature set to provide detailed metrics and insights into your audience and performance. Server console tasks can also be managed through WMSPanel, eliminating the need to log in via SSH.

In addition to the WMSPanel web UI, Nimble Streamer also offers APIs for greater flexibility and control. The WMSPanel API allows for control of server settings and retrieval of statistics, while the Nimble Streamer native API provides real-time information on streams and the ability to control individual server instances. When it comes to performance, Nimble Streamer is one of the most efficient software media servers on the market, capable of handling large amounts of viewers and bandwidth. The platform can be adjusted and improved through various performance tuning techniques, and load balancing can be used to build scalable streaming solutions.

WMSPanel Web Interface

The best way to control and monitor Nimble Streamer instance is WMSPanel, a web service to control and report on your servers.

• WMSPanel web UI is available via any browser.
• Multiple servers can be controlled via singe UI.
• Every setting can be applied to multiple servers within a few clicks simultaneously.
• Non-admin users can be given permissions to control Nimble Streamer server instances.
• Admins may also assign a group of non-admins to control a separate group of servers using data slices.
• 2-factor authentication is supported and recommended for accessing WMSPanel.

Secure your account in 3 easy steps article gives ideas about working securely in WMSPanel.

Setting up streaming is very easy with WMSPanel. Please take a look at Live streaming and Video-on-Demand streaming sections to find respective instructions for streaming setup.

Reporting is also simple. WMSPanel has an excellent reporting feature set which covers every aspect of streaming process and gives detailed metrics of your audience. It also allows setting up white label of your stats to represent them to your customers. Visit reporting section of our website to learn more.

Regarding server console tasks, WMSPanel allows setting up server-side streaming tasks via Nimble Streamer with no need to log in via SSH.
This can include any stream processing as well as streaming environment setup, like running ffmpeg commands.

Configuration Files

There are two config files for Nimble Streamer, each responsible for different aspects of behavior.

nimble.conf is a configuration file which contains general settings which affect overall behavior.
Those settings can be typically defined only in this config file, not in web UI.
Check configuration parameters reference to see what may be interesting for you.

rules.conf is a file where settings for server behavior related to protocols, applications, streams and their parameters.
Settings from WMSPanel override settings which were manually added to rules.conf. The rules.conf syntax doesn't have a reference. Using WMSPanel to configure your servers, you don't need to change this file.
You can also make backups of this file in order to restore it in the panel in case of hardware failure or add it as a pre-configured server.

Cloud backups of Nimble Streamer rules.conf are also available for improving redundancy. You can make manual and automatic backups.

Using APIs

Manual operation via WMSPanel web UI or configs are not the only ways to control live streaming behavior and get statistics.

HTTP APIs give more flexibility.

• WMSPanel API allows controlling servers' settings and get statistics from WMSPanel.
• Nimble Streamer native API allows getting real-time streams' status and performing some control activities on individual server instance, without interacting with WMSPanel.

Push APIs provide interactions between Nimble Streamer instance and handler applications on your side.

• Publish control framework allows to secure your ingest points from unwanted streams. It has several levels of control including custom handler web app to apply your business logic to your broadcasting process. This is especially useful for mobile broadcasting.
  Read this overview to learn more about benefits of publish control framework and check the detailed setup description.
• Playback sessions authorization supports sessions authorization via external handler to decide which of the connecting users may continue receiving the stream.
• Pay-per-view framework is part of paywall framework which allows controlling playback on a particular stream or even single user level.
• Stream availability push API allows getting notifications about incoming publishing and un-publishing of RTMP, RTSP, MPEGTS, Icecast and Transcoder output streams.

Performance Tuning

Nimble Streamer is the most efficient software media server on the market which our customers use in various cases like utilizing 10Gbps bandwidth and low latency streaming.
Nimble can be adjusted and improved to handle huge amounts of viewers.

Take a look at performance tuning basics to learn about basic approaches to best performance.
Also, take a look at Nimble Streamer cache performance article explaining the approximate calculation of cache required for streaming.

Load balancing based on Nimble Streamer API can also be used to build scalable streaming.

Logging

Nimble supports server-side logging for further analysis.
Server logging article shows basic logging setup.
Configuration parameters reference provides full list of parameters to control logging under "Logging" label.

Zabbix Monitoring

Users can utilize Nimble API to connect it to Zabbix monitoring.
Zabbix monitoring of Nimble Streamer and SRT streams can be helpful to track server and streams performance.