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

Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

techblog.netflix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 126 posts

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#51

Post by kiwijamo »

hkmurakami wrote: post #44
partiallypro wrote: post #36

I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing…

If you think about it, Apple does something similar by having Samsung fab their processors.

Amazon could, if they wanted to, obtain a lot more useful data from the data Netflix hosts in AWS than Samsung could from just making chips for Apple. So I'm not sure if it's a good comparison.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#52

Post by nitwit005 »

partiallypro wrote: post #36

I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing…

Microsoft also sells through the Xbox platform, which is in direct competition for the TV space.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#53

Post by ascendantlogic »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15

Does this mean Amazon can mine Netflix's data to improve their Prime Video services?

AWS is a gigantic cash cow for Amazon now. If they were caught with their hands in a competitor's cookie jar the fallout would cost them in the billions. They probably wouldn't risk it, but this is just me hypothesizing.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#54

Post by stoic »

partiallypro wrote: post #36

I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing…

I don't think the differentiation in that space is in technical implementation, but rather in content quality (produced or "acquired")

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#55

Post by singlow »

cpollard wrote: post #29
hetfeld wrote: post #12

Dropped Oracle, using MySQL. Why not use PostgreSQL instead?

I know regarding HIPAA, Aurora isn't supported but mySQL is. Maybe there's a reason why it's not HIPAA compliant that made it unusable for Netflix? And cost?

What aspects of HIPAA does Aurora cause problems for which wouldn't be a problem for other storage engines? The Aurora engine RDS product supports all of the normal MySQL access controls, SSL in transit and at-rest encryption for the data, snapshots and backups.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#56

Post by ww520 »

kbenson wrote: post #31
ww520 wrote: post #18

DRBD works very well for high availability, especially good to provide failover for master database, since that usually requires fast failover like under 10 seconds. Five or six years ago, did couple HA setup with DRBD along with Linux HA and virtual IP. The failover work great.

I was under the impression the accepted way to fail-over with mysql and DRBD was to fail out the old server, and then start repairing tables, because you couldn't be sure they were in a valid state. That's about a decade old info though. I always just set up master/master replication with mysql. You can get free distributed reads that way if you architect your application right.

DRBD produces two mirror copies of data. When the primary failed, the standby has whatever data the primary has just before the crash. When the standby starts up, the RDBMS goes through the normal recovery and bootup. It's same as the primary crashed and being started up again.

MySQL's master/master has a number of complication and problems: 1. data loss due to async nature of replication, 2. update conflict on same data on multiple masters, 3. two masters mean two IP so all the clients need to know how to fail over to different IP, 4. complication in adding or removing master.

With DRBD, the disks are mirrored so that's no chance of data loss once a transaction is committed. There's only one master so no complicate conflict resolution. Linux HA's virtual IP means the standby will take over the primary IP so the clients don't need to know there's a server failover. Adding or removing standby is easy. DRBD will sync the disks automatically, no downtime on the primary.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#57

Post by ihsw »

niftich wrote: post #46
truncate wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per this article, Netflix only migrated their billing infrastructure not their video streaming service.

That's because they've already migrated their videostreaming infrastructure to AWS (and some in Google Cloud Storage as a failsafe). This Ars Technica article from February summarizes the multi-year effort: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/netfli...

Just to be clear -- their video streams are still served up via Netflix's OpenConnect appliances. The surrounding infrastructure -- everything "outside" of the play button -- finished moving to AWS.

Their billing system has now joined its siblings in living on AWS.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#58

Post by GrinningFool »

hiuhsdf wrote: post #48
partiallypro wrote: post #36

I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing…

Yeah, this decision makes no sense, AWS is not even cost-effective past a certain, relatively small, amount of resource usage. Netflix could have easily built their own infrastructure for this, plenty of smaller companies do it and save tons of money. The only thing that would make sense here is if Amazon offered them their services at a huge discount, which could be a move looking to either acquire Netflix in the ne…

Netflix started with their own infrastructure[1] and migrated it all to AWS. Presumably this was more cost-effective for them.

[1] https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/completing-the-net...

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#59

Post by curun1r »

partiallypro wrote: post #36

I find it to be a peculiar business decision to completely (as much as you can) migrate to one of your largest competitors' cloud service. It seems like Microsoft is the only, of the larger cloud providers, that doesn't -really- compete with Netflix. (Google has YouTube, and I guess even Microsoft has a much smaller Windows Store presence.) Even if Amazon can't access the raw data, they could see how you're utilizing…

I don't see Netflix and Amazon being serious competitors...yet. For both of them, the main competitor is cable. The more that either/both of them are able to get people to "cut the cord," the better it will be for both of them.

I can't speak for others, but for me, the decision wasn't, "should I choose Netflix or Prime Video?" Instead, it was, "Can I find enough programming to satisfy me for less than I'm paying for cable?" The only way my answer was yes was with multiple streaming subscriptions.

Re: Netflix Billing Migration to AWS

#60

Post by niftich »

ihsw wrote: post #57
niftich wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they've already migrated their videostreaming infrastructure to AWS (and some in Google Cloud Storage as a failsafe). This Ars Technica article from February summarizes the multi-year effort: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/netfli...

Just to be clear -- their video streams are still served up via Netflix's OpenConnect appliances. The surrounding infrastructure -- everything "outside" of the play button -- finished moving to AWS. Their billing system has now joined its siblings in living on AWS.

Those being the colocated servers they give to ISPs?

EDIT: yes. [1] [2]

[1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/ [2] http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/colo-cloud/...

Post reply on HN