Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#1

Post by raleighm » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud
theinformation.com

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#2

Post by Aissen » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

Looks like this is paywalled.

Edit: Since this is being downvoted, here is the proof: https://screenshots.firefox.com/bgD6FxWvQS4e0sB2/www.theinfo...

I have no issue with paywalled-content, it should just be noted that this is, at least for some readers.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#3

Post by blackaspen » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:09 PM UTC

A lot of this article isn't that surprising -- especially the part where they're keeping "Business Critical" data on GCP. Of course they are! Every company needs a disaster recovery plan and in general shouldn't put their eggs in one basket.

I'd be interested to see where the AI/ML frameworks differ though, and what additional value one can extract using GCP versus AWS and at what cost/presumptions.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#4

Post by forgot-my-pw » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

I would think if a business use more than 500 servers, it would make sense to start considering having your own datacenter?

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#5

Post by blackaspen » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #4

I would think if a business use more than 500 servers, it would make sense to start considering having your own datacenter?

It's different for everyone.

If your 500 servers are for storage, S3/GCS will beat you in cost. For compute, that might be a different story, but then you still have to consider regionality, networking, etc.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#6

Post by assblaster » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

I think long term, Netflix needs redundancy, especially when the primary supplier is a competitor in the same space.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#7

Post by skywhopper » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

Netflix has been "testing the waters" at GCP for years. And as their infrastructure grows, relying on a single cloud provider would be a silly limitation to put on themselves. Disaster-recovery/failover is a very natural use case for multi-cloud deployments. Not to mention that for certain workloads and patterns, GCP is cheaper and better. Netflix operates at a scale well beyond what most AWS managed services can really address, and broad cloud patterns like object storage, function-as-a-service, VMs, and networks, can be abstracted away given enough resources, which Netflix surely has. Not to mention that at Netflix's scale they have real leverage over cloud providers and what services they offer. They would be stupid _not_ to be playing AWS and GCP against each other for pricing (on which they already get a huge discount) and features.

I'm guessing there's some project getting underway to move/duplicate some subset of resources hosted in AWS on GCP. It's likely a huge project that dwarfs most corporations entire cloud presence, but I'm guessing for Netflix it's a small piece of a giant puzzle, and that the vast majority of their operations are still centered at AWS and will be for years and years to come.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#8

Post by wise0wl » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #4

I would think if a business use more than 500 servers, it would make sense to start considering having your own datacenter?

You really have to factor in the labor costs of infrastructure and operations into that as well. Running your own private "cloud" isn't cheap. And no matter what you do, you aren't going to get even close to feature parity with the public cloud offerings (or even speed, if you are using virtual-machines). There are a lot of trade offs that you have to weigh in that don't always come down to bare dollars and cents.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#9

Post by supernovae » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #4

I would think if a business use more than 500 servers, it would make sense to start considering having your own datacenter?

I wouldn't do my own datacenter as in build out a building, but I would certainly lease a cage and build out my own infrastructure at probably half that count.

As far as I know, Netflix has POP's for content delivery in many carrier facilities so it's not a pure cloud player by any means.

For the cost of 1 year for a single cloud server you can buy a 52 core dell with 256gb ram and a few SSD's and have price/performance ratios that heavily scale in your favor and with a scheduler like marathon, k8s, nomad you can easily achieve elasticity in a private colo to a large degree without also marrying yourself to cloud specifics and nothing would stop you from peering with major cloud providers for seasonal elastic needs.

Re: Netflix, Long an AWS Customer, Tests Waters on Google Cloud

#10

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

assblaster wrote: post #6

I think long term, Netflix needs redundancy, especially when the primary supplier is a competitor in the same space.

And the standing problem now is that their secondary supplier they're considering is also a competitor in the same space. It's a wonder Netflix isn't testing the waters against Azure, since Microsoft just closed their video sales offerings down.