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Server Administration · Media Delivery · Production Troubleshooting

Media Streaming & Infrastructure Management

Production support for a media platform: streaming services, file delivery, cloud-mounted storage, media processing, and server-side troubleshooting.

LinuxSSHAnt Media ServerFFmpegS3-compatible storagePM2ApachePHP

Production support and administration on an existing platform. This was not a from-scratch build of the streaming system. This is a private project. The case study is sanitized and illustrative: client names, URLs, data, credentials, and infrastructure details are intentionally omitted.

01Overview

This work was infrastructure and production engineering on an existing media platform. It involved keeping streaming, processing, storage, and application services healthy, and finding the cause when something failed.

Media platforms have many layers, and a failure anywhere tends to show up as the same symptom: a video that won't play or a file that won't download. Much of the job was narrowing that down methodically.

02Key Challenges

Delivering large files correctly
Large media files depend on correct HTTP range handling (206 Partial Content) so players can seek and resume without downloading everything again.
Storage that isn't local disk
S3-compatible storage mounted on the server behaves differently from local disk. Mount health and latency directly affect delivery and processing.
Many layers, one symptom
The streaming server, FFmpeg jobs, Node processes under PM2, and the Apache/PHP application can each fail in ways that look identical to the user.

03My Contributions

  • Linux server administration
  • SSH-based diagnostics
  • Ant Media Server maintenance
  • FFmpeg media processing
  • S3-compatible storage mounting
  • PM2 application process management
  • Apache/PHP application troubleshooting
  • Large media file delivery and partial-content handling
  • Storage capacity and service health checks

04Architecture

The layers involved in getting media from storage to a viewer, simplified and with all identifying details removed.

  1. 1

    Storage

    S3-compatible object storage mounted on the server.

  2. 2

    Processing

    FFmpeg handles media processing tasks.

  3. 3

    Streaming

    Ant Media Server delivers streams.

  4. 4

    Application

    Apache/PHP serves the application and files, and Node services run under PM2.

  5. 5

    Delivery

    Clients request media, often in byte ranges, for playback and download.

05Engineering Decisions

Work down the stack
Confirm service and process health first, then read logs, then check storage and mounts, then look at application code. This keeps an investigation from jumping to conclusions.
Capacity checks as routine
Checking disk usage, mount status, and service health regularly catches storage problems before they appear as delivery failures.
Supervised processes
Running Node services under PM2 gives restart handling and a single place for process logs when diagnosing issues.