Kaltura CE V3.0 - Amazon Cloudfront Guide

This guide is applicable for Kaltura CE version 3.0.x installations

The Kaltura Community Edition is a free, open-source, self-hosted video platform. It is developed through the combined efforts of Kaltura and the community and is available under the GNU Affero General Public License v3

This guide helps you understand how to add a CDN to your Kaltura CE or on-prem systems using Amazon Cloudfront's custom origin capability.

Cloudfront with custom origins

Cloudfront is Amazon's content delivery network (CDN) technology. Until recently, Amazon only offered the ability to use Cloudfront when your distributions resided in an Amazon S3 storage bucket. However, Amazon has now added the ability to use Cloudfront using a custom origin. This makes it easy to add a CDN to your Kaltura CE or on-prem system.

Note: Cloudfront does not yet support streaming distributions when using a custom origin. Only HTTP download-type distributions are currently offered by Amazon.

Creating a Custom Origin Distribution

Amazon has not yet added the ability to create custom origin distributions using their AWS Management Console, so you must create your distribution using a 3rd party tool or by using the Amazon API directly. However, once you've created your distribution, you can manage it using the AWS Management Console.

A list of 3rd party tools that support creating Cloudfront distributions using custom origins are in this blog post.

In this example, we use the free Cloudbuddy application (Windows-only) to create a Cloudfront custom origin distribution. You can download the Cloudbuddy personal edition here.

After downloading and installing Cloudbuddy, follow these steps to create a custom origin distribution for your Kaltura CE or on-prem system:

• Launch Cloudbuddy
• Add your Amazon developer credentials to Cloudbuddy
• Click on the "Cloudfront" button
• The Cloudfront Console will pop up and you can then click on the "Switch to non-S3 origin" link
• Click on the blue plus symbol next to the DNSname to add the custom origin. Enter the domain name of your Kaltura CE or on-prem installation and select "http-only" for the Protocol Policy.
• Click on the "Enable Distribution" checkbox
• The Cloudfront domain name will now appear in the "Distribution" box. Select and copy the cloudfront domain name to your clipboard. Your Cloudfront domain name will look something like this: d3pyg0vu80tr46.cloudfront.net
• Click on the Save button.

You can now navigate to the AWS Management Console where your Cloudfront distribution should appear under the Cloudfront tab.

Starting the Cloudfront Distribution on Your Kaltura System

Once you've created the Cloudfront distribution, it's easy to add it to your Kaltura system.

Go to the admin console and navigate to the Publishers tab and select Publisher Management. Next to the publisher(s) who will be using Cloudfront, go to the "Select Action" drop-down menu on the far right and select "Configure".

The "Publisher Specific Configuration" dialog box will appear.

Enter the Cloudfront distribution domain name that you copied to the clipboard in the last step in the "Publisher Specific CDN Host" box. Make sure you prefix it with "http://". Click on the Save button.

It will take some time for your media assets to migrate to Cloudfront. On the AWS Management Console, it wil show a state of "InProgress" while your assets are being distributed. Soon, you'll see cloudfront URLs in the embed codes.
EXAMPLE: <a rel="media:thumbnail" href="http://d3rsg0vu80tr46.cloudfront.net/p/100/sp/10000/thumbnail/entry_id/0_yzz42tom/width/120/height/90/bgcolor/000000/type/2" />

Setting Cloudfront Distribution as the default Kaltura CDN

Here's how to make your Kaltura Server use the CloudFront CDN as the default CDN for all publishers.

1. Edit the kConf.php file -- [path to your kaltura installation]/app/alpha/config/kConf.php
2. Change the value of: "cdn_host" => "@CDN_HOST@" to your Cloudfront distribution domain name (prefixed with http://).
   EXAMPLE: "cdn_host" => "http://d3pyg0vu80tr46.cloudfront.net"

You're all done.