Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#51

Post by toast0 » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 6:41 AM UTC

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!"

At work, we use a dedicated server provider, so we're; when we identify faulty hardware, we file a ticket, and they swap it out. We still need to have enough bare metal machines allocated so we can turn one off while they fix it, etc; but we don't worry about staffing or supplying the datacenter.

I wouldn't want to switch to AWS from this; bare metal plus a good account manager gives us a lot of visibility and reliability; Netflix blogs a lot about the chaos that is AWS, and we save a lot of effort by having machines that for the msot part just work, consistently; instead of having to deal with instances where performance is variable, etc. Running our own datacenter might be nice for some reasons: more control and information about the network, ability to make hardware choices that don't match the providers offerings, etc; but running a datacenter is a big change.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#52

Post by fjarlq » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 6:44 AM UTC

nchelluri wrote: post #21

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...

May I ask how you did that?

This "Come From Google" (CFG) paywall bypass bookmarklet usually does the trick for me:

https://umur.io/paywall-bypass-bookmarklet-come-from-google/

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#53

Post by rcaught » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 6:57 AM UTC

oldgregg wrote: post #31

probdist wrote: post #14

Netflix is still running its own CDNs / using CDNs outside of Amazon. "The company, which competes with Amazon in the video-streaming business, elected to keep control of its own content delivery network." So Netflix is still probably doing the bulk of their traffic themselves. Application servers with AWS is probably not a huge bill versus massive video traffic.

Fascinating. I bet they are running their own CDN to prevent Amazon from having full access to their traffic volume/streaming demand. Would be huge competitive advantage for amazon streaming if they could see per-title demand.

No, it would be due to the sophisticated peering agreements - https://openconnect.netflix.com/

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#54

Post by skuhn » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:01 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #37

whoopdedo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering about that. Open Connect was significant in the disagreement between Netflix and Comcast that spurred the net neutrality debate. Unless I'm mistaken Netflix ended up agreeing to the peering fees, though after negotiating down a bit. So does using AWS for mundane traffic actually save them money by avoiding the CDN bandwidth that Netflix has to pay ISPs to use?

AFAIK Amazon charges more for bandwidth than the greediest ISP, but I admit I haven't looked at the EB/month transfer tier.

There's literally no way to operate a CDN-like service from AWS; no matter what discount you get from Amazon, you're paying per-byte instead of 95th percentile billing and settlement-free peering.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#55

Post by Animats » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:18 AM UTC

This is very strange. Amazon is in the pay per view streaming video business itself.[1] Netflix is outsourcing their entire business to a direct competitor. At what point will Amazon decide that they don't need Netflix?

Or perhaps there's an acquisition or merger coming.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Prime-Instant-Video/b?node=2676882011

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#56

Post by adrianbg » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:25 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #49

knorby wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

"The closing of Netflix’s last data center has been seven years in the making."

Does that sound like a drop in the bucket?

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#57

Post by Aissen » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:29 AM UTC

From my understanding this is a simple decision: do not focus on something that isn't your core business. Amazon is doing it well, Microsoft is, the cloud is becoming more competitive every day, and they're big enough not to use the public pricing, so it's even more economical for them.

In addition to this, they only need a few "machines" (https://openconnect.netflix.com/hardware/) to have full ISP-local caches of Netflix; why bother with a full datacenter ?

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#58

Post by pfg » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:39 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #50

p1esk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lar…

Arguably, Digital Ocean is more like a regular hosting provider with better onboarding. Plenty of hosters offer comparable infrastructure for the same price (you can even get something dedicated).

They're also far cheaper than AWS, where you pay a premium for the elasticity and access to the ecosystem. If there's anything to compare AWS with, it would be Google Cloud Platform, Azure and maybe Rackspace.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#59

Post by hrez » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:42 AM UTC

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…

That really depends on a type of workloads and requirements you have. But basically you (your team) have to be smart about how AWS or any other cloud provider is used. No cloud buzzword alone will help you avoid cost, availability issues etc otherwise. As for the "perks" i.e. discounts talk to AWS account rep.

Re: Netflix to Shut Down Last Datacenter

#60

Post by pfg » Fri, Aug 14, 2015, 7:54 AM UTC

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…

I remember seeing a talk by a Netflix engineer (can't find it unfortunately) where he talked about multi-cloud strategies and how they aimed towards decoupling some of the components of his project from implementation details specific to AWS. So it's quite possible they're already slowly paving the way towards becoming a cloud-agnostic or multi-cloud platform. Not to say that it wouldn't still be a huge undertaking, but I don't think this never crossed their minds before.