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Netflix site is down

outage.report

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Re: Netflix site is down

#2

Post by jaytaylor »

Question:

Given the relatively limited amount of static content they distribute, and what seem like only daily updates, how is there not a switch they can flip when things go south to spin the service up in another region or on another provider?

Seems like it'd be the logical thing to do given AWS is always going to have another outage, and NFLX has lots of time and smart engineers to plan and prepare for these eventualities..

Re: Netflix site is down

#5

Post by pfarnsworth »

jaytaylor wrote: post #2

Question: Given the relatively limited amount of static content they distribute, and what seem like only daily updates, how is there not a switch they can flip when things go south to spin the service up in another region or on another provider? Seems like it'd be the logical thing to do given AWS is always going to have another outage, and NFLX has lots of time and smart engineers to plan and prepare for these event…

They do this all the time. They switch back and forth between regions very frequently to test exactly this scenario.

Re: Netflix site is down

#6

Post by bbarn »

jaytaylor wrote: post #2

Question: Given the relatively limited amount of static content they distribute, and what seem like only daily updates, how is there not a switch they can flip when things go south to spin the service up in another region or on another provider? Seems like it'd be the logical thing to do given AWS is always going to have another outage, and NFLX has lots of time and smart engineers to plan and prepare for these event…

I think you might underestimate the scale here. It's more like, it's "always on, in all regions, with as many providers as they can". This is a company that's had to innovate in basically every possible business space it can to keep delivering what it has been.

Re: Netflix site is down

#7

Post by mali9 »

jaytaylor wrote: post #2

Question: Given the relatively limited amount of static content they distribute, and what seem like only daily updates, how is there not a switch they can flip when things go south to spin the service up in another region or on another provider? Seems like it'd be the logical thing to do given AWS is always going to have another outage, and NFLX has lots of time and smart engineers to plan and prepare for these event…

Yes, you are right. Infact I was wondering the same too. They also make sure their systems are resilient by testing out scenarios as simple as one instance going down [1] to a whole data center going down [2] and yet this happens. I guess we have to wait till the post-mortem report comes in on this.

[1]- http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-in... [2]- http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-simian-army.html

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