Do I need to select 3-tier applications for optimizing cost and performance for a streaming platform that supports 2000 concurrent users on AWS?

Question

An education institute is offering a high number of courses throughout the world and they are using AWS Cloud server to manage their operations. To ensure their smooth operations, do I need to select 3-tier applications for optimizing cost and performance for a streaming platform that supports 2000 concurrent users on AWS?

re:Post Agent · Accepted Answer

When optimizing cost and performance for a streaming platform supporting 2000 concurrent users on AWS, selecting 3-tier applications is not necessarily a requirement. Instead, you should focus on leveraging AWS services specifically designed for streaming and scalability.

For a streaming platform, Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that can provide an excellent solution. It offers instant access to desktop applications from anywhere, scales automatically, and provides on-demand access to users. AppStream 2.0 manages the AWS resources required to host and run your applications, which can help optimize costs and performance.

To optimize costs, consider the following strategies:

1. Use AppStream 2.0's fleet options to match your specific end-user and business requirements. This allows you to scale and maximize performance without overspending.

2. Implement Quality-Variable-Bit-Rate (QVBR) encoding if you're using AWS MediaLive for video processing. This can reduce the average size of video files and segments by 25-40%, leading to storage cost savings and reduced CloudFront egress costs.

3. Leverage CloudFront Price Classes to serve content only from regions where your users are located, eliminating unnecessary data transfer costs.

4. Compress video files before uploading to S3 to reduce file sizes and subsequent data transfer costs.

5. Configure Cache-Control and Expires HTTP headers on your video objects to maximize CloudFront caching.

6. Monitor usage reports in Cost Explorer to identify optimization opportunities.

By focusing on these streaming-specific optimizations and leveraging AWS services designed for this purpose, you can create a cost-effective and high-performance streaming platform without necessarily relying on a traditional 3-tier application architecture.  
**Sources**  
[Optimize application streaming costs with Amazon AppStream 2.0 | Desktop and Application Streaming](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/desktop-and-application-streaming/optimize-application-streaming-costs-with-amazon-appstream-2-0/)  
[Optimizing costs using Amazon AppStream 2.0 fleet options | Desktop and Application Streaming](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/desktop-and-application-streaming/optimizing-costs-using-amazon-appstream-2-0-fleet-options/)  
[Cost Optimization Strategies for CloudFront in Video Streaming Setup | AWS re:Post](https://repost.aws/questions/QUboIiK5SESA-G3ZjcmbRu7w/cost-optimization-strategies-for-cloudfront-in-video-streaming-setup)

Kazi Md Saiful Alam · Answer

Thanks for your prompt response. I would rather prefer different solutions to ensure scalable, resilient, redundant, and cost-effective solutions. As such my preference would be to use Auto Scaling Group and Load Balancer to optimize scalability, for ensuring low latency and fast content delivery across the region, I shall use Amazon CloudFront, for storing and streaming video, I shall use S3 and ec2. I shall use Amazon CloudWatch and Cost Explorer for monitoring and tracking costs. I might use S3 Lifecycle Policies for the automatic transitioning of infrequently accessed data to lower-cost storage classes (e.g., Glacier) and enable Savings Plans or Reserved Instances for predictable EC2 usage to reduce costs further.
Step-by-step execution of the respective application would surely help to achieve the targeted outcome.

Do I need to select 3-tier applications for optimizing cost and performance for a streaming platform that supports 2000 concurrent users on AWS?

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