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

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

#111
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALB has HTTP2 support.

Only at the front end, it downgraded to 1.1 between the ALB and your servers.

All load balancing services do that today. It is rare to get HTTP/2 on both ends unless you run your own software like Envoy.

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

#112

My prediction is that by 2020 Netflix will move a significant portion of their IT to Google Cloud. Why? Most of their architecture is microservices / linux containers / serverless, and Google is simply way better positioned there (with Kubernetes as their crown jewel). They will eventually win. Source: no source, just my "expert" opinion (6 years at AWS, 2 at VMware's cloud, currently CEO at a startup).

Isn't Netflix invested heavily on Mesos than k8s for their container orchestration? for example Titus https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/tagged/titus Fenzo https://github.com/Netflix/Fenzo

While that might be the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if they let teams play with k8s as well. Besides, one should always look at these choices objectively; if Google + k8s is a better deal overall than AWS & Mesos, then you shouldnt let your earlier investments cloud your judgement.

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

#113
post #93

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.

One of the reasons I don't like working on GCP or Azure is because I prefer ELB.

ELB is the worst LB out there.

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

#114
This is natural commodification of compute, especially with such large deployments where there will be a lot of in-house tooling and apps that just need raw compute and storage to run, no matter where it comes from.

The rise of containers and Kubernetes makes this even easier now. It'll be interesting to see how the clouds differentiate beyond this as most managed services are still rather underwhelming compared to the hype and are also often beat by Kubernetes deployments if available.

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

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The margins you're paying for include functionality you don't use and your own cost of integration, observation, and management of their stuff. The principal advantage of using a cloud provider is avoiding capital costs and any useful apis they have that you'd otherwise have to develop/maintain in-house.

There are lots of open source products that offer programmatic/desired state/idempotent config & apis for provisioning and hardware lifecycle management in private dc.

There are not even close to how good and mature the AWS tools are.

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

#116

There are a lot of comments saying that Netflix should run its own datacenter. Adrian Cockcraft helped lead Netflix's effort to move to AWS and now is a VP at AWS https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriancockcroft/ He did an interview with Software Engineering Radio back in 2014 explaining their motivation. http://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft...

> Adrian Cockcraft helped lead Netflix's effort to move to AWS and now is a VP at AWS. I always get a bad taste in my mouth when I read things like that. Was it really an objective choice, or was this AWS’ way of saying “thank you” ?

He led the largest migration from on premises to AWS. Who else would have more experience?

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

#117

There are a lot of comments saying that Netflix should run its own datacenter. Adrian Cockcraft helped lead Netflix's effort to move to AWS and now is a VP at AWS https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriancockcroft/ He did an interview with Software Engineering Radio back in 2014 explaining their motivation. http://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft...

> Adrian Cockcraft helped lead Netflix's effort to move to AWS and now is a VP at AWS. I always get a bad taste in my mouth when I read things like that. Was it really an objective choice, or was this AWS’ way of saying “thank you” ?

No way, if I was CTO of a big company (or, say, whoever at Pentagon is in charge of IT), I would love to speak to the guy that shifted Netflix away from in-house datacenters to "The Cloud".

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

#119
post #70

My prediction is that by 2020 Netflix will move a significant portion of their IT to Google Cloud. Why? Most of their architecture is microservices / linux containers / serverless, and Google is simply way better positioned there (with Kubernetes as their crown jewel). They will eventually win. Source: no source, just my "expert" opinion (6 years at AWS, 2 at VMware's cloud, currently CEO at a startup).

How big doesn’t netflix have to get before it’s in their best interests to build data centers of their own? Toolchains are maturing. They’ve figured out ways to get multiple uses from the same hardware. They shouldn’t be beholden to the rollout or geographical plans of two cloud providers. I don’t even mean build out their entire infrastructure. I think even running your base load on your own hardware makes you under…

They _had_ their own datacenters, and decided to move their control plane to the cloud (AWS) to avoid having to run the those datacenters themselves.

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

This was a big deal in 2008 :)

(Maybe there's an even bigger size where it no longer makes sense for them to outsource this, but bidding GCP and AWS against each other seems like a reasonable strategy for their use-case).

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

#120

This is off topic, but the mention of my data going onto Google cloud made me wonder: does Netflix share viewing histories? I read their privacy policy but it was so mealy mouthed it's hard to make heads or tails of to a non-lawyer.

To whom? One would imagine that the viewing data they collect would be one of their advantages over their competitors, making it detrimental to their business to sell it?
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