MACROMEDIA Breeze Owner's manual

Brand: MACROMEDIA

Model: Breeze

Type: Owner's manual

MACROMEDIA Breeze is a web-based platform that enables users to conduct online meetings, share presentations, and collaborate on projects. With Breeze, you can easily host virtual meetings, deliver interactive training sessions, and collaborate with colleagues and clients in real-time. It offers features such as video conferencing, screen sharing, polling, and chat, making it an ideal tool for remote teams and businesses looking to enhance their communication and collaboration.

Deployment Guide

Trademarks

Add Life to the Web, Afterburner, Aftershock, Andromedia, Allaire, Animation PowerPack, Aria, Attain, Authorware,

Authorware Star, Backstage, Bright Tiger, Clustercats, ColdFusion, Contribute, Design In Motion, Director, Dream Templates,

Dreamweaver, Drumbeat 2000, EDJE, EJIPT, Extreme 3D, Fireworks, Flash, Flash Lite, Flex, Fontographer, FreeHand,

Generator, HomeSite, JFusion, JRun, Kawa, Know Your Site, Knowledge Objects, Knowledge Stream, Knowledge Track,

LikeMinds, Lingo, Live Effects, MacRecorder Logo and Design, Macromedia, Macromedia Action!, Macromedia Breeze,

Macromedia Flash, Macromedia M Logo and Design, Macromedia Spectra, Macromedia xRes Logo and Design, MacroModel,

Made with Macromedia, Made with Macromedia Logo and Design, MAGIC Logo and Design, Mediamaker, Movie Critic,

Open Sesame!, Roundtrip, Roundtrip HTML, Shockwave, Sitespring, SoundEdit, Titlemaker, UltraDev, Web Design 101,

what the web can be, and Xtra are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. and may be registered in the

United States or in other jurisdictions including internationally. Other product names, logos, designs, titles, words, or phrases

mentioned within this publication may be trademarks, service marks, or trade names of Macromedia, Inc. or other entities and

may be registered in certain jurisdictions including internationally.

Third-Party Information

This guide contains links to third-party websites that are not under the control of Macromedia, and Macromedia is not

responsible for the content on any linked site. If you access a third-party website mentioned in this guide, then you do so at your

own risk. Macromedia provides these links only as a convenience, and the inclusion of the link does not imply that Macromedia

endorses or accepts any responsibility for the content on those third-party sites.

translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form in whole or in part without prior written approval of

Macromedia, Inc.

Acknowledgments

Director: Erick Vera

Project Management: Stephanie Gowin

Writing: Bob Benedict

Editing: Noreen Maher

Production and Editing Management: Patrice O’Neill

Production: Adam Barnett

First Edition: May 2004

Macromedia, Inc.

600 Townsend St.

San Francisco, CA 94103

CONTENTS

Breeze Deployment Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

About Breeze technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Launching a meeting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Common configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Additional configuration guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Firewalls and proxy servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Learning management system (LMS)/Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC)

communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

SSL Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Planning your deployment summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4 Contents

Breeze Deployment Guide

Breeze Deployment Guide is a supplement to Breeze Installation Guide. This deployment guide

offers additional information about installation configurations, and firewalls and proxies, as well

as guidelines for successful deployment.

About Breeze technology

A Macromedia Breeze installation includes components that interact to form a total solution. End

users log in, enroll in courses, view reports, and complete additional basic functions using a web-

based application that runs in a browser. End users can also participate in meetings using a

Macromedia Flash Player based application.

The web application interacts primarily with Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server

components. When a user launches a meeting, the Flash Player application interacts primarily

with the Breeze Live server, although there is still some interaction with the Breeze Presentation

and Breeze Training server as well. The following figure illustrates the primary components of the

system and how these components interact:

6 Breeze Deployment Guide

For two computers to communicate over the Internet, the client computer must have the IP

address of the server computer. Typically, the client uses a domain name such as

www.mycompany.com, and a name server translates the IP address of the server. To send

information to a specific application running on the server, the client must also know the port for

that application. For example, most web servers listen to port 80. Servers typically run a few

applications, such as a web server, a mail server, and an FTP server, and each one of these

applications owns or listens to a specific port.

Launching a meeting

You can trace the order in which components perform when users launch a meeting to help you

understand the primary system components. The following example illustrates the typical order

in which Breeze uses components to place users successfully in a meeting:

The web browser collects the login credentials and communicates the credentials to the

Breeze server.

The Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server accepts the login credentials and validates

the user.

The Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server creates a session and sends the home page

information to the browser.

Note: Some users might not see the home page if they received a meeting invitation directly.

In the web browser, the user sees the meeting on the home page and clicks the link (and

consequently the meeting launch button) to launch the meeting.

In Flash Player, the meeting interface, implemented as a Flash application, opens.

In Flash Player, the Flash application initiates communication with both the Breeze

Presentation and Breeze Training server and the Breeze Live server to participate in the meeting.

The Breeze Live server waits to initiate the meeting until the designated start time. (The

meeting actually is ready to begin during earlier communication between the Breeze server and

the Breeze Live server.)

The Breeze Live server handles most of the requests from Flash Player to display media, such

as video and audio, and to conduct application sharing.

The Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server interacts with Flash Player to provide

meeting services, such as content display and views into the Content library.

Common configurations 7

Common configurations

The previous figure in this document illustrates a common configuration for enterprise

customers. For small- to medium-sized customers with simple network configurations, installing

all Breeze server components on a single server is a viable solution. As an alternative, consider

using two separate servers, as the following figure shows:

The Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server is installed on one computer, and the Breeze

Live server is installed on a different computer. This configuration separates users who view the

content, courses, and reports from users who participate in meetings.

This configuration reduces the load on a single server and can also solve issues related to networks

and firewalls.

Breeze Installation Guide discusses several common configurations and the following additional

configurations:

Clustering Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training servers Creating a cluster of servers lets

you distribute end-user traffic across multiple servers. Use this configuration if you have many

users and are concerned about the load on a single server, or when you want to have more than

one server as a redundant system, in case a single server experiences hardware failure.

Clustering Breeze Live servers You can also create a cluster of Breeze Live servers to distribute

end-user traffic across multiple servers. Use this configuration if you have many users and are

concerned about the load on a single server. Breeze Live has many features that produce high

loads, such as support for audio, video, and sharing applications.

Separating Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training databases You may install the Breeze

database on a separate server from the application. Doing so lets you create more stringent backup

and redundancy procedures for the database itself, separate from the application. Breeze currently

supports Microsoft SQL Server 2000, which must be installed on the database server.

8 Breeze Deployment Guide

Additional configuration guidelines

The following are additional guidelines to help you set up your network and Domain Name

Service

(DNS):

Static IP addressees Breeze does not support static IP addresses to access the server. Many

websites and systems let you access their content by entering either a URL, such as

www.search.com, or an IP address, such as 66.252.27.402. You must set up a domain name

for your Breeze server and map that to the proper IP address using either a DNS server or a

.hosts file.

Two server configurations and ports If you install Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training

modules on one server, and Breeze Live on another, configure Breeze Live to use port 80.

Although Breeze Live can use port 80 or port 1935, port 80 is better known and the system

encounters fewer issues, such as with firewalls and networks.

Firewalls and proxy servers

Firewalls and proxy servers can cause problems for a single-server Breeze configuration. The

Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server uses port 80 by default, which most firewalls and

proxy servers allow. Breeze Live uses port 1935 by default, and reverts to port 443 if port 1935 is

not successful. These two ports are not as common to firewalls and proxy servers; if necessary,

Breeze Live attempts to use port 80 to interact with the end-user’s computer if ports 1935 and

443 aren’t available.

Firewalls and proxy servers 9

A conflict arises when you install all Breeze components on the same server with a firewall or

proxy server. The Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server uses port 80, and Breeze Live

also uses port 80 if ports 1935 and 443 do not work. You then have two applications running on

the same server with the same IP address using the same port. The following figure illustrates this:

Traffic coming into the server for port 80 only goes to one of the two applications; the traffic

might go to the wrong application. One solution is to install the two server applications on two

separate computers, ensuring that they have their own IP addresses. Another solution is to update

your firewall or proxy server to support two different ports on the same computer: using port

1935 for Breeze Live, for example. Several TechNotes at www.macromedia.com offer instructions

about configuring a Breeze Live server. (Search for Flash Communication Server topics. Flash

Communication Server powers Breeze Live.)

Learning management system (LMS)/Aviation Industry CBT Committee

(AICC) communication

If you use a proxy server or firewall, keep in mind during installation that the AICC e-learning

standard requires content to send data back to the learning management system using HTTP to

track user results. If you use Breeze and the AICC option for LMS, and your users are outside of

your firewall, you must make sure that your firewall accepts incoming HTTP requests to capture

learner results. AICC standards define this communication strategy.

10 Breeze Deployment Guide

SSL Support

Breeze requires an SSL accelerator to support encrypted communication over the Internet. You

can use a hardware solution, such as F5 BigIP SSL accelerator, to improve results. Macromedia

recommends using hardware solutions, due to the high bandwidth requirements of streaming

media. Macromedia does not recommend using software SSL solutions.

The Internet uses well-known ports for nonencrypted HTTP-based web traffic and encrypted

HTTPS-based web traffic. Nonencrypted traffic generally goes to port 80, and encrypted traffic

generally goes to port 443. SSL accelerators work by intercepting traffic on port 443, decrypting

the information, and sending it on to the server through port 80. There is no indication to the

server that the original data was encrypted. When you set up your SSL solution with Breeze

however, you must still send the decrypted traffic to Breeze on port 443, even though it is already

decrypted and could, in theory, go to a nonencrypted port. The problem is, the Breeze server

generates specific URLs to allow users to go directly to meetings and courses. If you are running

an SSL accelerator, these URLs must begin with https instead of http (the “s” in HTTPS indicates

encrypted Internet traffic). Breeze uses the port of incoming traffic to determine whether the

URL should begin with http or https.

For the solution, if you are installing Breeze Presentation, Breeze Training, and Breeze Live

modules, and you are using an SSL accelerator, you must install each server on a separate

computer. With SSL, the Breeze Presentation and Breeze Training server uses port 443 for

encrypted traffic, as does the Breeze Live server. The section, “Firewalls and proxy servers”

on page 8, explains the conflict that occurs if both applications are running on the same

computer and listening to the same port.

Planning your deployment summary

The following are key decisions you should make before you deploy:

How should you configure your network and DNS server to allow end users to interact with

the servers?

Have a plan that includes IP addresses and domains that you need to support.

Review the installation documentation to confirm that you know how to change these settings

in Breeze.

Do you require more than one server (such as when you are using a firewall or proxy server)

or should you create a cluster of servers?

Review Breeze Installation Guide to determine if

you require more than one server, and to learn how to create a multiserver configuration.

Will some of your users interact with the servers by communicating through a firewall or

proxy?

Verify that your firewall or proxy server configuration allows end users to interact

with the servers. You must also use the proper configuration of servers.

Are you adding SSL to the final solution? Verify that you correctly set up and configured your

SSL solution following the tips in this document. Remember that using SSL requires you to

install each server on a separate computer.

MACROMEDIA Breeze Owner's manual

MACROMEDIA Breeze Owner's manual

MACROMEDIA Breeze Owner's manual

Related papers

Other documents