New Zoom server structure improves CSC’s video conferencing service
CSC offers Funet member organizations a Zoom-based video negotiation service, Funet Miitti. Finnish conference traffic is routed via servers located inside Finland, thanks to the new enhanced server structure. The service enables smoother video conferencing connections for higher education and research institutes.
The Nordic server capacity used by the Funet Miitti service has been scaled up during the winter. In addition to the previous video server cluster in Denmark, server clusters located in Sweden, Norway and Finland have been added. Together they form a distributed, fault-tolerant server structure. In the event of a server failure, meetings are automatically routed to other servers. The service is now more efficient and reliable than ever before.
The Finnish video server cluster was installed in CSC’s Espoo datacenter in February and has since served Finnish users. The conference traffic of Finnish users thus remains within Finland. The maximum capacity of the video server complex located in CSC’s datacenter is currently adequate to meet the needs of Funet users.
The combined capacity of the server system distributed throughout the Nordic countries is approximately 300,000 concurrent users. With the new extensions, this co-Nordic environment, implemented by NORDUnet, is the world’s largest on-premise Zoom environment. The video conferencing capacity reserved for education and meetings has been increased 40-fold during the last 12 months and will be expanded even more in the future. In addition to CSC’s Keilaniemi datacenter, there are plans to add more servers in Finland to enhance the resilience and scalability of the service even more.
March 12 marked the year since the transition to distance learning and remote working. The Funet Miitti service has been serving learners, teachers and researchers all this time. We are pleased that the service has contributed to the safe continuation of study and work during exceptional times.