■a Content Manager (CM), which includes an
■
The Sun MediaCenter server delivers MPEG bit streams at a constant bit rate. The content of the streams are stored on an array of disks. The server guarantees that, unless the server hardware fails, once a stream request is accepted, it will be delivered at the specified constant bit rate until the stream ends or the server is told to stop.
Using a Sun MediaCenter server, you can begin playing a stream within seconds after storage of that stream on the server has started. This feature is called “playthrough”.
The Sun MediaCenter server protects against
1.2Sun MediaCenter Hardware
The Sun MediaCenter product line is built upon existing Sun hardware and software. This provides you with excellent performance (especially in terms of cost per stream) and flexibility in interfacing Sun MediaCenter servers to their environment.
Each model of the Sun MediaCenter product line is designed to maximize input/ output throughput from the server’s disk subsystem through a network interface, to an output device. Each model is equipped with a large amount of RAM, for buffering streams and handling online content loading, and a large amount of disk storage.
Within a disk subsystem, specific disk models are chosen for their appropriateness for multimedia applications.
The Sun MediaCenter hardware architecture is shown in FIGURE
