Preparing for large-scale live streaming events on AWS — Part 2

This article provides guidance for preparing large-scale live streaming events on AWS, focusing on content delivery, testing, and support strategies to ensure flawless viewer experience at scale.

• Use Amazon CloudFront with Origin Shield to consolidate cache-miss requests and keep origin load predictable during peak traffic
• Employ CloudFront Functions for lightweight operations and Lambda@Edge for compute-intensive media customization tasks
• Implement staged testing approach: component load testing, integration testing, full-scale production rehearsal, and spike/failure testing
• Design realistic load test profiles with 60-minute ramps, sustained peaks, and periodic spikes to validate auto-scaling and cache warming
• Test identity/signup surge and ad-decisioning paths separately as independent failure modes from the media pipeline
• Use AWS Fault Injection Service to inject controlled failures and validate graceful degradation under dependency latency and compute termination
• Engage AWS Unified Operations for Media or AWS Countdown Premium for designated specialist support during critical events

Rigorous preparation across architecture, capacity, delivery, testing, and support engagement ensures reliable large-scale live streaming without surprises on event day.