---
title: ZEN MASTER October 2019 RELEASE NOTES
slug: zen-master-october-2019-release-notes
docTags: 
createdAt: 2025-03-20T14:23:03.614Z
---

The following updates were pushed to ZEN Master on October 28, 2019.


TRANSCODER LOAD BALANCING



When ZEN Master assigns a new Channel to a Broadcaster in a Broadcaster cluster, it looks for a
Broadcaster that is already connected to the relevant Source and for a Broadcaster that is currently in
a good state. A Broadcaster is in a good state so long as its error thresholds - HDD, CPU, Memory,
GPU, GPU Encoder, GPU Decoder, GPU Memory – do not exceed the default or user specified values.



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If no Broadcasters are currently connected to the relevant Source and are in a good state, then ZEN
Master will look for another Broadcaster in the cluster in a good state, connect the Source, and
deploy the Channel.
When adding a typical non-transcoding Channel to a Broadcaster, the CPU and memory usage will
increase a small incremental amount with each new Channel. For this reason, thresholds can be
relatively high without risking have a new Channel take the threshold over 100. However,
transcoding channels use significantly more CPU, GPU, and memory and adding a transcoding
Channel to a Broadcaster already at 85% GPU, for example, could take the GPU consumption to 100%
and cause performance issues.


### TRANSCODER THRESHOLDS


To increase the reliability of deploying new transcoding channels or restarting transcoding channels if
Broadcaster servers go offline, ZEN Master now provides a second set of thresholds used specifically
for assigning transcode Channels to a Broadcaster in a cluster. The thresholds are used to define the good state of a Broadcaster, as mentioned previously, specifically for transcode channels. The
thresholds have default values and can defined by the user by clicking Transcode Thresholds when
adding or editing a Broadcaster cluster.



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Depending on how much CPU, GPU, and memory the transcode profiles being used will consume, the
thresholds can be set to optimal values to allow as many transcode channels as possible to be
assigned to the Broadcaster without overloading it. If no Broadcasters in a good state are available in
the cluster, the user will be notified upon trying to save the new Channel.


TRANSCODER BROADCASTER ASSIGNMENT



ZEN Master also offers an alternative approach to managing the load of transcoding on Broadcasters
by allowing the user to explicitly assign transcode Channels to specific Broadcasters in a cluster.
When creating a new transcode Channel, a dropdown called Target Broadcaster allows the user to
choose a specific Broadcaster from the processing cluster selected just above in the dialog.



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Note, this approach can only be used for non-AWS clusters. When using AWS clusters, AWS manages
the virtual machine instances, including automatic removal and replacing of instances experiencing
hardware issues. In this case, there is no consistent identity for a Broadcaster instance to link to the
Channel so ZEN Master cannot assign specific Broadcasters to the Channel. The transcoder threshold
approach, described in the previous section, is recommend for AWS clusters.
For Azure, GCP, and manually created Broadcaster clusters, the user will be able to select which
Broadcaster to use for the Channel. It is the responsibility of the user to determine that the selected
Broadcaster will not be overloaded by the new transcode Channel, and if so, move that Channel to
another Broadcaster.

### MINOR IMPROVEMENTS AND BUG FIXES


• Added paging for long lists of Grids. (ZM-306)
• Added filter by Access Tag to reports. (ZM-327)
• Updated VLC plug-in links to v13 (ZM-321)
• Duplicate Sources in delivery Channel are no longer allowed. (ZM-348)
• Removed and deprecated Quick Report button on the dashboard. It will be replaced by a new events
log functionality in a coming release. (ZM-317)
• Fixed issue where Broadcasters were not visible to non-admin users in Grid display. (ZM-305)
• Fixed issue where editing objects with no changes causes UI .update() error. (ZM-312)
• Fixed Receivers rendering as r\_xxx when user doesn't have any permissions on the Receiver. (ZM-313)
• Fixed error when attempting to delete Target after it's Channel has been deleted. (ZM-339)
• Fixed issue where editing access tags causes a full re-implementation of some Targets. (ZM-341)
• Fixed issue with "No active broadcaster" showing on Channel diagram instead of Broadcaster name
and green status when user has no permissions on the Source. (ZM-342)
• Fixed error when muting AWS clusters. (ZM-343)
• Fixed issue where users without permissions still see Delete, Edit, and Mute buttons. (ZM-345)
• Fixed “Error 401 Unauthorized” when adding new Targets. (ZM-349)
• Security update – Enhanced permissions and now sanitizes all input for HTML/JavaScript. (ZM-314)
• Security update – Require current password on user self-edit, enforce strong password policy, and
block weak cyphers/imported public keys. (ZM-315)
• Security update - Session timeout reduced to 10 minutes. (ZM-316)