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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

#131

Post by risaacs99 »

supernovae wrote: post #59
jtwaleson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

it's not just about it going down.. if you rely only on us-east they have had multiple times when you couldn't autoscale because there was no more capacity... if you rely on running lean and scale/up/scale down events us-east would have bitten your ass a lot the past year... Just for comparison sake even our private colo has had 0 issues the past decade that caused any interruptions to service

I do run such a service, one that must scale daily in response to traffic at multiples of off peak traffic and I can state unequivocally that this is false.

I can vaguely recall over the past several years single availability zones having short periods of time where single instance types were unavailable, but never the entire region... The idea that this happens "a lot in the past year" for the entire region isn't my experience at all.

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

#132

Post by notyourday »

lallysingh wrote: post #129
notyourday wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most fun thing about startup world is that it pretends that normal rules of economics and accounting do not apply to it (until a startup runs out of money) $X in CapEx makes balance sheet look better than $X in OpEx.

As generously as I can put it: It's a form of denial that people use when overwhelmed with everything else. There's typically too little real data on what the money's going to look like until a bunch of things are tried out, each essentially a random variable. So instead of freaking out about that, just bandage over it with some lies to yourself until you can actually start addressing it. Businesses in well-known mar…

If you need to pivot before you are cashflow positive, then you dont have a business and you never had a business.

I keep being amazed that total business failures that result in pivots are considered to be successes in the startup world.

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

#133

Post by KirinDave »

Cshelton wrote: post #67
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.

AWS's ELB/ALB have been rock solid for us. Not sure what you are referring to when you say 'antiquated infrastructure'?

To answer your question directly, AWS's poor spike handling has really made me distrustful of them. It's not that AWS's support staff is bad (actually, they're phenomenal given the difficulty of that job) but... the fact that I can be taken down by a big scale event because I can't pre-scale my ELBs without support help that takes hours is kinda annoying.

Now, I've been TOLD by ___________________________________ this is actually because it's a pain in the butt and they're working to fix it, but AWS's budget seems to favor new shinies over iterating on the existing environment. Look how long it took us to get a new and less buggy AWS dashboard and that still hasn't propagated to all the internal services.

I could go on. For example, my experience is that GCE's and even Azure's I/O and networking is way faster, more consistent and more reliable than AWSs. I host all my dev boxes on GCE because using an attached drive (so I can de/re-provision to save on costs) is much less agonizing. Also: google has some AMAZING database products that category kill whole infrastructure tasks. It's a very good kind of vendor lock-in when they can say, "You can't move away because no one else has found a way to provide our feature set."

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

#134

Post by swozey »

axaxs wrote: post #107
assblaster wrote: post #6

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

Honest question - is Amazon really seen as a competitor here? Every time I've attempted to use Prime video, I'd scurried away terrified of their awful ui. I guess it's hard to gauge subscribers since it's 'thrown in', but I'd be curious to know how many people really use the service.

I use Amazon Video constantly now that Netflix is mostly/hugely populated with Netflix Originals only.

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

#135

Post by btian »

supernovae wrote: post #9
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/performa…

Netflix doesn't pay retail for AWS or G Cloud

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

#136

Post by jazoom »

odammit wrote: post #128
jalk wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? or are you a member of AWFUL - Americans Who Figuratively Use Literally ;)

Literally has been used as an intensifier for a figurative expression since the 1800s and has been defined in the dictionary that way for quite a while. It was used in this manner by Charles Dickens, James Joyce and American authors as well. Although, it pisses me off when I hear it used that way.

Unfortunately that usage makes the word completely useless for its actual meaning. It could have been a very useful word.

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

#137

Post by nojvek »

closeparen wrote: post #52
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 not either/or. You want to be in a position where your own racks and public cloud providers are all running instances of the same distributed scheduler. Then you can buy capacity wherever it makes the most economic sense at the moment. Just proving that you have the capability to run your own hardware cost-effectively can negotiate Amazon/Google down to that price or lower.

This is probably the nicest answer. With things like kubernetes, hardware is quite abstracted. If it makes sense to use your own hardware, your software should be good enough to effortlessly shift some load to your own hardware and back incase own hardware can't handle a spike. Hybrids are probably the future where you rent when it makes sense, and buy when it makes sense and move compute and storage by dragging a slider.

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

#138

Post by TheIronYuppie »

greggarious wrote: post #98

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.

Disclosure: I work at Google Cloud on Kubeflow

I can't speak for Netflix's privacy policy, but, if your concern is with Google, we never ever ever ever mix/merge Google customer data with customer data. Like ever ever ever.

FWIW, we STRONGLY suggest (just to be doubly sure) that you encrypt at rest and/or offer the option to use Customer Supplied Keys. Encrypt all the things! https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at-rest/

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

#139

Post by illumin8 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #108
scarface74 wrote: post #56

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” ?

You're ignoring the fact that he spent a few years at Battery Ventures in between Netflix and AWS. Adrian is a well respected professional in his field, has been around for decades, and nobody holds any negative perceptions of him.

He wasn't hired by AWS because he migrated datacenters to the cloud. He was hired by AWS because he created this: https://netflix.github.io/ - Netflix's OSS, which has allowed them to attract so much great talent, was a direct result of Adrian's passionate open source advocacy. He's doing the same thing at AWS now, and has already accomplished great things like open sourcing all of the AWS documentation.

Disclaimer: work at AWS.

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

#140

Post by tracker1 »

chrisweekly wrote: post #92
joevandyk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you are aware but AWS has a newish loaf balancer now: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/appl...

loaf -> load, lol

It's the best thing since sliced bread after all.
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