Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

blogs.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#41

Post by boomzilla »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #10

Do you think they have a special deal w/ Amazon? Otherwise I imagine that's a really expensive bill. Do you think they're doing it because its cheaper when you account for things at a larger scale? Like, reduced liabilities, payrolls, CapEx, whatever? Or is it more expensive but still "easier" and they go with it? I really REALLY would like to hear everything from everyone about this, because right now I'm facing tha…

This depends on your current infrastructure, your expected growth over the next few years and obviously your software stack. In my experience, unless you are doing something with extreme latency or scaling requirements, AWS is likely cheaper in TCO, at least in the beginning where your fleet is less than a few hundreds machines. Also note that AWS is not just EC2. Other services like S3 or Dynamo can be life savers. The downside of AWS is that you can become over reliant of it.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#42

Post by swang »

joshmn wrote: post #3
orbitur wrote: post #2

This is 3rd article this week I've been blocked from reading. How are people continually reading and upvoting these links? Is everyone a subscriber? Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/FGY1lSv.png

Here you go :) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

I'm confused how this is still allowed by Google. I thought you were not allowed to show Google one thing while other users another?

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#43

Post by p1esk »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #39
p1esk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, do you need as much elasticity as Netflix does?

Not like in "I had a surge in traffic of millions of visitors" But yes like in "Some hardware failed, but yeah that's not my problem anymore!"

Sorry, I don't get it - why would you consider using cloud servers if you don't have significant spikes in your traffic?

Regarding hardware failures - it's not that hard to arrange proper redundancies in your systems, and it will certainly be cheaper than outsourcing it to Amazon. Cloud only becomes cost effective when your spikes are several times larger than your normal traffic, and you must maintain good QoS at all times.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#44

Post by knorby »

nickff wrote: post #34
fiberoptick wrote: post #30

I've never understood why so many companies are comfortable giving Amazon such leverage over their business infrastructure. Could someone explain why this is a good move in spite of the risk that Amazon could jack their prices up in the future?

The free market is the basic guarantee Netflix is counting on.[1] If Amazon 'jacks up it's prices', Netflix will simply move to another provider. Amazon is also unlikely to make sudden moves which disadvantage its customers, as any such moves will come at a tremendous cost of reputation, and many customers will leave and never come back (; as Amazon has no power to compel customers to purchase their services). In a m…

> If Amazon 'jacks up it's prices', Netflix will simply move to another provider.

Like hell they will. The switching cost for Netflix, and really most heavy AWS users, would be extreme at this point. A good portion of the engineering org would pretty much have to dedicate themselves to the task of switching. That isn't to say other organizations can't be nimble between providers, but it would be hard for Netflix at this point.

AWS is already engaging in a commodity hardware market in order to run the DCs running. AWS fears becoming a pure extension of the same thing, and they have a decent bit of lock-in designed to their services for that reason.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#46

Post by enobrev »

anotherangrydev wrote: post #10

Do you think they have a special deal w/ Amazon? Otherwise I imagine that's a really expensive bill. Do you think they're doing it because its cheaper when you account for things at a larger scale? Like, reduced liabilities, payrolls, CapEx, whatever? Or is it more expensive but still "easier" and they go with it? I really REALLY would like to hear everything from everyone about this, because right now I'm facing tha…

As someone who works on a far smaller video platform than Netflix commands, I can definitely say that AWS has given us plenty of freedom in places that planning our tiny slice of a DC has not. We dabble with dedicated hardware, but it takes so much more planning and budgeting - mostly of human resources. The budget we stick to is barely monetary, as it eventually gets quite a bit cheaper to run things (especially video transcoding) upon metal, but hours and mindspace are far more costly. The things we have started moving to metal are tested on the cushy and forviging pillow that is "AWS". We build and monitor there long before we consider moving the services to our own hardware and that conversation includes total cost, including those that are sunk into the massively larger upfront investment (buying / maintaining servers).

That said, we try not to build our system _within_ the world of AWS, but rather "on top" of it. Our backend software is written to run on any recent ubuntu distro, and moving elsewhere, whether it be another cloud platform or dedicated hardware, is more of an Operational issue than something requiring significant changes in our soft machinery. For instance, we stick with our own messaging services rather than SQS as it's more portable. And our databsaes are RDS (MySQL). I assume this is why AWS sticks to well-used protocols for its larger services, because it allows us to use their services with an open mind and not worry as much about vendor lock-in. This gives us room to grow and worry about the expense when the expense becomes a valid issue.

We're allowed to build on their platform without worrying about whether we can move on to another, provided we keep that in mind. As it stands, we're almost completely on AWS, but I run our entire platform on my [ubuntu] desktop without issue. The Ops are different, as I'm installing our software and dependencies manually, but the software itself can live on any server. And even as we consider dedicated servers, we keep in mind that we may want to continue using AWS for scaling during spikes, and so we continue to write our software and manage our systems accordingly - keeping in mind the idea that it should run on any system that meets our minimum requirements, whether it be bare metal, managed, or in the "cloud".

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#47

Post by coryrc »

swang wrote: post #42
joshmn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go :) https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

I'm confused how this is still allowed by Google. I thought you were not allowed to show Google one thing while other users another?

You're not allowed to show google's bots a different thing than what a user sees when they click a search link.

Which is not the same as visiting the link via other methods (entering into URL bar directly, for example).

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#49

Post by hvidgaard »

knorby wrote: post #44
nickff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free market is the basic guarantee Netflix is counting on.[1] If Amazon 'jacks up it's prices', Netflix will simply move to another provider. Amazon is also unlikely to make sudden moves which disadvantage its customers, as any such moves will come at a tremendous cost of reputation, and many customers will leave and never come back (; as Amazon has no power to compel customers to purchase their services). In a m…

> If Amazon 'jacks up it's prices', Netflix will simply move to another provider. Like hell they will. The switching cost for Netflix, and really most heavy AWS users, would be extreme at this point. A good portion of the engineering org would pretty much have to dedicate themselves to the task of switching. That isn't to say other organizations can't be nimble between providers, but it would be hard for Netflix at t…

Considering how many millions Netflix pays Amazon every single month, a team of highly skilled engineers is a drop in the bucket, and if switching means they can save enough, they'll do it.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#50

Post by adventured »

p1esk wrote: post #43
anotherangrydev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not like in "I had a surge in traffic of millions of visitors" But yes like in "Some hardware failed, but yeah that's not my problem anymore!"

Sorry, I don't get it - why would you consider using cloud servers if you don't have significant spikes in your traffic? Regarding hardware failures - it's not that hard to arrange proper redundancies in your systems, and it will certainly be cheaper than outsourcing it to Amazon. Cloud only becomes cost effective when your spikes are several times larger than your normal traffic, and you must maintain good QoS at al…

Because sometimes cloud servers are very cost effective, easy, and fast to deploy: Digital Ocean for example.

$40 / month for 4gb of ram, 4tb of transfer, and two cores, is very cost effective. Linode is also very reasonable.

If all I need is that scale of computing, what should I use instead that makes sense other than cloud services? Setting up colo or a dedicated box for that would be more expensive and a much larger hassle.

Post reply on HN