Media Servers | Axero Documentation

Axero has advanced storage settings that allow you to store videos, photos, files, and content files on your own storage devices. If you're worried about your web server's lack of space, use this area to take the heavy data load off your web server. 

About Media Servers

1. Photos Section: All photos (including thumbnail images and album cover pictures). This also includes a user profile picture and an avatar picture.
2. Videos Section: All video files (including original video files and the converted .flv files, as well as thumbnail images).
3. Documents Manager (Files section): All documents. These can be any file type (like .doc, .jpg, or any other format).
4. CMS Section: All attachments added to content (e.g., CMS pages, articles, blogs, etc).

Default Media Servers

The Axero Installation process creates the following default media servers:

1. https://your_application_url/Assets/Uploaded-Photos: Used for photos and user profile images
2. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-Videos: Used for videos and related files
3. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-Files: Used for documents in the Files section
4. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-CMS-Files: Used for attachments

You can easily change these media servers per your unique requirements.

Add Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. Select a Site: The domain this media server will store media for.
3. Select a Media server type: The media type this server should store.
4. Enter the Media server root URL: The website name or virtual directory of your media server (set via IIS).
   • Example: If you want to create a storage location to store all your user photos at this location: C:\MyStorageFolder\UserPics, you first need to create a virtual directory referencing this physical location. If you created the virtual directory/website as https://PhotoMediaServer.com, enter that URL in this field.
   • Ensure the new media server network location you add has read-write permissions set for the account that will write to that location (via IIS Worker Process/UserAccount).
5. Enter the Media server IP address. (Optional)
6. Click Save.

How to Set Media Servers for Storing Different Files

Let us assume you want to store photos and videos both in different locations and on different hard drives. For example, you may want to store all user photos on C:\UserPhotos and all videos on D:\UserVideos. First, you must create two virtual directories (or websites) in IIS to map these two physical locations. Let's say you created:

1. https://your-community.com/userphotos: This maps to C:\UserPhotos physical folder.
2. https://your-community.com/uservideos: This maps to D:\UserVideos. (Note: The hard drive can also be a network-mapped drive on a different server.)

Just make sure that the new media server network location you add has read-write permissions set for the account that will write to that location. (IIS Worker Process/UserAccount)

Next, you need to create two media server entries and add the virtual directories.

Then you need to "tell" Axero "to use" these media servers while storing photos and videos uploaded by the user. For this, perform the following steps:

1. Select the media server to store photos from the list. All media servers will be listed in this list, and you need to select the right option (e.g., select https://your-community.com/userphotos to store photos).
2. Click the edit icon to edit the media server.
3. Set the site, media server type, and the media server URL for photos.
4. Click Update.
5. Perform the same steps to update the media server for videos.

After setting these options, all user photos will get stored at C:\UserPhotos and videos at D:\UserVideos.

Edit Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. For a media server, click the edit icon.
3. Make changes to the media server.
4. Click Save.

Delete Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. For a media server, click the delete icon.
3. Click OK.