Reducing costs for AWS services

Typically, there is no cost for data transfers in to the EC2 instance from the internet. However, there is a cost associated with transferring data out from the EC2 instance, often referred to as data egress. Working with the XProtect clients and viewing live or recorded video generates data egress. It depends on:

  • The number of users.

  • The type of XProtect client used.

  • The frequency and duration of use.

  • The amount of video streams viewed.

Adaptive streaming

Adaptive streaming is a streaming method that is used when multiple live video streams are shown in the same view. It enables the clients to automatically select the live video streams with the best match in resolution to the streams requested by the view items. Adaptive streaming reduces the network load and improves the decoding capability and performance of the client computer.

By enabling adaptive streaming, you reduce the amount of data transferred to XProtect Smart Client, XProtect Web Client, and the XProtect Mobile client.

To enable adaptive streaming, see the XProtect VMS administrator manual.

Amazon AppStream 2.0

Run client applications as hosted user sessions in the cloud using Amazon AppStream 2.0. Users can access AppStream 2.0 hosted applications via HTTPS in a compatible web browser, or by using the AppStream 2.0 client application. See Amazon AppStream 2.0.

Depending on your VMS installation, AppStream 2.0 might be a more cost-effective solution, because it includes the AWS costs for data egress, eliminating the costs associated with transferring multiple high-resolution video streams from the VPC to your on-premises environment.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 requires that you increase the AWS service quota of your deployment. For more information, see How do I manage my AWS service quotas?.