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

Post by supernovae » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

blackaspen wrote: post #18

supernovae wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/performa…

That's a good distinction. CoLo providers are pretty reasonably priced and most of the larger ones are good at what they do. There's a HUGE scale difference between a CoLo and your own -- as soon as you start having to negotiate diesel supply contracts yourself things get crazy fast.

Post by falcolas » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

ryanianian wrote: post #38

auvi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (on which they already get a huge discount) just wondering, how huge (as a percentage) that discount is?

They'll play a few games with contracts to spread the costs around (e.g. giving n% discounts for m years of reserved capacity). You probably won't get much just by saying "I can just go to GCP" and asking for the world. The more you spend, the more distinct services you buy, and the longer you want to commit the steeper the discount. I've seen up to 10% but I'm sure they do more for bigger customers.

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

drstewart wrote: post #46

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you'd have to pay for, Amazon or Google has to pay for for you... plus profit margin. At Netflix scale, it's almost impossible for someone else's cloud to be cheaper than running your own, and hiring the necessary staff and acquiring the necessary space and hardware to do so. I honestly have to wonder if the level of Amazon's discount for Netflix is absurd to the tune of "we lose money doing this" just to…

This is assuming you can do everything at the same efficiency level as Amazon or Google. It's likely that you wouldn't be able to outperform on these metrics to a degree that it would make the profit margin difference a wash.

Post by joevandyk » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #25

Firstly: not very new. Hasn't Netflix been at this for a long time? Secondly, everyone should be checking. Not only is Google doing a lot of subsidization, but their services are really really good. My current employer ended up being unable to use them but it's I acutely regret every day I'm forced to build out things Google already has or deal with Amazon's frustratingly antiquated ELB infrastructure.

Post by supernovae » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

jtwaleson wrote: post #48

blackaspen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I jokingly tell everyone I know using AWS to "not use us-east1" and that they need to use another region not just AZs...and they always laugh and say "you were right" with us-east goes down. At least from my view, there's a difference in backbone versus corporate space networking, but you're right, most everyone won't ever realize any savings from that side of things.

How often does us-east-1 go down? I know of about 4 big outages in the last 7 years but you're making it sound like it happens much more frequently. Is there a list of outages somewhere?