How to Bridge The Cloud Gap With the New Vidispine Server Agent by Isak November 3, 2015 Howto Vidispine Server Agent combines the Vidispine Transcoder and an Agent for local content into a bridge between your cloud Vidispine instance and on-premise essence. This means you can keep your original assets safely on-premise while still enabling a Vidispine cloud solution.
One of the major features in the VS 4.4 release is the support for Vidispine Server Agent, VSA for short. There was actually some support for VSA already in 4.3, but now it is official, and also published in the Vidispine repository.
So what is VSA? VSA is a component that makes it possible to connect local storage to a cloud instance of Vidispine or VidiXplore. The VSA is a secure gateway from the Vidispine instance to your on-prem files, meaning you can manage, analyze, transcode, conform the essence without moving it to the cloud. All while your business logic stays in the cloud, close to your end-user application. And when you are ready to move your content, all of Vidispine's storage rules and mechanisms are at your disposal.
So what is VSA, really? VSA is two parts the transcoder and the agent. Let's start with the transcoder. It is the same Vidispine transcoder that is used in Vidispine Core and Enterprise, so nothing new there.
Then there is the agent. The agent does several things:
It establishes a secure, encrypted, link from your local server to the Vidispine instance (VS).
It provides VS with a view of the local files, so they are visible in the Vidispine API ( /API/storage/file )
It can do file operations on the local storage.
How to install The latest VSA installation guide can be found in the API documentation. If you have added the Vidispine repository to your server's list of repos, you just have to install two packages: vidispine-agent and vidispine-agent-tools. All dependencies are installed automatically.
Next, you need to establish the connection to your running Vidispine instance. This is done by enabling a ssh tunnel to the Vidispine server. On your Vidispine server, run
$ vidispine-admin vsa-enable sudo validation...............: done enter administrator user name (Enter for admin): admin enter administrator password: ***** enter external address for Vidispine: my-cloud-instance.example.com enter ssh port (Enter for 22): enter unique name for this node (optional but recommended, if not entered host name will be used): vsa-dubai enter uuid for this node (optional): vsa user......................: done creating ssh directory........: done adding key....................: done setting owner.................: done setting permissions...........: done # Copy this content to /etc/vidispine/agent.conf on the VSA machine and restart the vidispine-agent service operationMode=VSA-VS userName=admin password=KioqYWRtaW4= connectionString=my-cloud-instance.example.com\t22\tvsa-user\t-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEpgIBAAKCAQEAzNWDVm6dC5 E1nivHwMRyMUFN...xZlh4S /Z\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n vxaname=vsa-dubai
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$ vidispine-admin vsa-enable
sudo validation...............: done
enter administrator user name (Enter for admin): admin
enter administrator password: *****
enter external address for Vidispine: my-cloud-instance.example.com
enter ssh port (Enter for 22):
enter unique name for this node (optional but recommended, if not entered host name will be used): vsa-dubai
enter uuid for this node (optional):
vsa user......................: done
creating ssh directory........: done
adding key....................: done
setting owner.................: done
setting permissions...........: done
# Copy this content to /etc/vidispine/agent.conf on the VSA machine and restart the vidispine-agent service
operationMode=VSA-VS
userName=admin
password=KioqYWRtaW4=
connectionString=my-cloud-instance.example.com\t22\tvsa-user\t-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\nMIIEpgIBAAKCAQEAzNWDVm6dC5 E1nivHwMRyMUFN...xZlh4S /Z\n-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----\n
vxaname=vsa-dubai
Now, create a file /etc/vidispine/agent.conf.d/connection on the VSA server, and copy the last 5 lines above to that file. (Configuration can be put in /etc/vidispine/agent.conf or in files in the directory /etc/vidispine/agent.conf.d , or both. The preferred way is in agent.conf.d.)
Now you can start VSA with:
Shell
$ sudo start vidispine-agent $ sudo service transcoder start
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$ sudo start vidispine-agent
$ sudo service transcoder start
Status can be retrieved with:
Shell
$ vidispine-agent-admin status sudo validation...............: done service.......................: status: started configuration file............: ok, listening on port 8090 connecting to VSA.............: ok, name vsa-dubai, uuid 0b15551e-84a0-4c98-9de4-4445fa55679d vidispine-agent...............: ONLINE, version 4.4.1, operation mode VSA-VS transcoder....................: ONLINE, version 4.4.1 vidispine.....................: ONLINE, connecting to my-cloud-instance.example.com as admin shares........................: no shares are defined
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$ vidispine-agent-admin status
sudo validation...............: done
service.......................: status: started
configuration file............: ok, listening on port 8090
connecting to VSA.............: ok, name vsa-dubai, uuid 0b15551e-84a0-4c98-9de4-4445fa55679d
vidispine-agent...............: ONLINE, version 4.4.1, operation mode VSA-VS
transcoder....................: ONLINE, version 4.4.1
vidispine.....................: ONLINE, connecting to my-cloud-instance.example.com as admin
shares........................: no shares are defined
On the Vidispine side, you should be able to find the VSA using API call /API/vxa/. The tunneled transcoder is also listed on /API/resource/transcoder/ .
