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The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

techblog.netflix.com

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Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#81

Post by gtirloni »

scurvy wrote: post #44
brianwawok wrote: post #19

How does this compare to k8s? Seems like it has everything plus a layer of scheduling and batch jobs on top?

Doesn't kubernetes run an overlay network (at least in some scenarios)?

An overlay network is not a requirement. The only requirement is that pods (collection of containers) should be able to communicate with each other directly without NAT. Each pod gets an IP address in the container network.

Overlay network technologies (flannel, weave, calico, etc) are popular but they aren't mandatory. You can implement it using hardware switches and VLANs if you wish.

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#82

Post by djb_hackernews »

throwasehasdwi wrote: post #56
djb_hackernews wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of incorrect information in this post. - Containers are a combination of namespaces, cgroups, and chroot (maybe). You don't need LXC to use containers. Docker doesn't even use LXC. - There is no overhead for running processes in containers. - There is no requirement to virtualize networks for containers. They can be configured to use the host's network directly, at which point you are bound by the host…

I was wrong about docker, back when I was playing with it it did use LXC, and appears to have started out as project to make a specialized version of LXC. You're right that Docker has its own container runtime now. The overhead for running containers is usually very low but real. The OS needs to partition low level resources that are normally shared and the scheduling introduces some overhead. I disagree about networ…

I'd need a citation that a process running in a namespace adds overhead.

My point about network virtualization is that it is not required to use linux containers. Yes, some container tools do create network abstractions that add overhead, but they aren't required and most tools allow you to optionally bypass the abstraction and sit directly on the host's network stack.

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#84

Post by kayoone »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #52

Netflix seems so over engineered to me. They basically have a catalog of a few thousand movies that are negotiated months in advance of actual use. Basically, they just need to encode them and put them on a box and ship them to edge caches. Caching immutable data scales incredibly well.I would also bet that 99.99% of the movies people actually watch on Netflix, would fit on a single box. In regard to the analytics, t…

In the end Netflix is one of the places people would like to work because of stuff like this. The sheer scale of operations at netflix combined with modern technology is very interesting to many engineers, so it also kind of work in favour of their HR.

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#85

Post by michaelper22 »

gbrown_ wrote: post #63

Is anyone else having issues accessing this? $ curl http://techblog.netflix.com/2017/04/the-evolution-of-container-usage-at.html Access Denied body {margin:0;font-family:verdana,sans-serif;} h1 {margin:0;padding:12px 25px;background-color:#343434;color:#ddd} p {margin:12px 25px;} strong {color:#E0042D;} Access Denied You are attempting to access a forbidden site. Consult your system administrator for details.

A previous workplace of mine does block Netflix, and consequently their tech blog.

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#86

Post by politician »

hueving wrote: post #2

>The theme that underlies all these improvements is developer innovation velocity I can't wait until this becomes buzzword de jour and startups start using it in their product descriptions. Then someone needs to start talking about products to "enable developer innovation acceleration" to outpace these crufty companies stuck at 25 kph.

There's a whole list of higher-order developer innovation derivatives for marketing types to explore - jerk, snap, ...

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#88

Post by zaidos »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #52

Netflix seems so over engineered to me. They basically have a catalog of a few thousand movies that are negotiated months in advance of actual use. Basically, they just need to encode them and put them on a box and ship them to edge caches. Caching immutable data scales incredibly well.I would also bet that 99.99% of the movies people actually watch on Netflix, would fit on a single box. In regard to the analytics, t…

That is the core of their product. However, there are a lot of by-products and back office software needed to run the company. As a consumer, you most likely are only perceiving a small percentage of the technology running a company.

- Applications for all devices Netflix is on (TVs, Phones, Displays, Roku, Apple TV, etc.) and all the support around it.

- Recommendation and analytical software within Netflix. Not even accounting for other areas of the company where ML can be applied.

- Billing and financial software for Netflix users and partners

- Proprietary/internal customer support software

- Content management system, along with all the international and legal challenges around that.

- Any/all software used by their marketing teams

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#89

Post by yomly »

lmkg wrote: post #62
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #52

Netflix seems so over engineered to me. They basically have a catalog of a few thousand movies that are negotiated months in advance of actual use. Basically, they just need to encode them and put them on a box and ship them to edge caches. Caching immutable data scales incredibly well.I would also bet that 99.99% of the movies people actually watch on Netflix, would fit on a single box. In regard to the analytics, t…

At one point, Netflix video streaming accounted for something absurd like 20% of all Internet traffic in the country. Regardless of whether it "scaled incredibly well," I would imagine there are still novel issues with that much scaling. Reliability also matters differently for video than it does for normal web traffic. It's one thing to shuttle 5GB (or whatever) of data over the course of an hour. It's another thing…

Beat me to it.

I am sure a large part Netflix's success is how seamless its products are: there's minimal to no loading time and the video stream is virtually always smooth - including during times of action/high frame rate.

Creating a video streaming platform is one thing, but creating a content delivery platform that is effectively as reliable as TV that is also cost efficient is no small task if you ask me...

Re: The Evolution of Container Usage at Netflix

#90

Post by inopinatus »

zaidos wrote: post #88
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #52

Netflix seems so over engineered to me. They basically have a catalog of a few thousand movies that are negotiated months in advance of actual use. Basically, they just need to encode them and put them on a box and ship them to edge caches. Caching immutable data scales incredibly well.I would also bet that 99.99% of the movies people actually watch on Netflix, would fit on a single box. In regard to the analytics, t…

That is the core of their product. However, there are a lot of by-products and back office software needed to run the company. As a consumer, you most likely are only perceiving a small percentage of the technology running a company. - Applications for all devices Netflix is on (TVs, Phones, Displays, Roku, Apple TV, etc.) and all the support around it. - Recommendation and analytical software within Netflix. Not eve…

* Operations and control plane for all of the above that is robust enough for SREs to deal with million-to-one-chance occurrences happening every few minutes.

* Complexity multiplier (variations of contracts, catalogues, infrastructure, language, currency, payment methods, taxation, government regulation, corporate governance, market structure, customer preferences) of offering service in >100 countries.

The suggestion that building a service like Netflix is a "solved problem" is naive to the point of idiocy.

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