

Why Netflix Chose Amazon’s Cloud as Their Computing Platform - tomeast
http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/four-reasons-we-choose-amazons-cloud-as.html

======
bdb
What happens when Amazon launches their competing streaming video service? [1]
Just a rumor at this point, but when a large set of content comes in-window
for both Netflix and Amazon and each needs to spin up a thousand instances to
transcode it? Who will get priority? [2]

It seems extraordinarily stupid to entrust such an obvious potential
competitor with the keys to your infrastructure, particularly in a single-
vendor solution.

This is fundamentally different from the Roku model -- neither Amazon nor
Netflix own Roku, so they can remain neutral.

(edit: formatting)

[1] [http://technologizer.com/2010/08/31/amazon-subscription-
stre...](http://technologizer.com/2010/08/31/amazon-subscription-streaming-
rumor/)

[2] And don't give me any bullshit about AWS not being capacity constrained
unless you routinely spin up 1000 temporary XL instances.

~~~
samratjp
"It seems extraordinarily stupid to entrust such an obvious potential
competitor with the keys to your infrastructure, particularly in a single-
vendor solution."

If this
([http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX](http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX))
is any indication, I am sure they are secretly building their farm somewhere
as we speak.

On a side note, I wonder why all these companies brag about AWS so much (yeah,
yeah, AWS is awesome, I use it myself too) - are they getting endorsement
incentives or something?

~~~
brown9-2
Netflix has recently started a "tech blog" and is keeping it regularly updated
with articles, although so far they mostly seem to be about "How Netflix uses
tech" rather than talking about their code, OSS projects, low-level design
decisions, etc.

I think they're starting to discuss these things a bit more as a recruitment
strategy.

~~~
ianhawes
Thats how I read the entire blog post...A recruitment effort.

------
maukdaddy
_We could have chosen to build out new data centers, build our own redundancy
and failover, data synchronization systems, etc. Or, we could opt to write a
check to someone else to do that instead._

If you are building almost any type of company today, it makes no sense to
build your own datacenter. We're going to look back in 10-20 years and laugh
that every company felt the need to build datacenters. While doing some
research relating to sustainability and cloud computing, I found some
statistics showing that federal agencies saved between 25-50% by moving to
"cloud" solutions.

[http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/0407_cloud_computing_we...](http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/0407_cloud_computing_west.aspx)

Cloud computing is an excellent way for companies to dramatically lower their
carbon footprint as well. Instead of using coal-fired electricity running your
own inefficient datacenters, why not host your stuff at Google or Amazon where
the PUE is low and they're using hydro/cleaner power?

~~~
RyanGWU82
_If you are building almost any type of company today, it makes no sense to
build your own datacenter._

Except for when it _does_ make sense.

I'm starting a project at my company to add a single server in-house, and move
some data storage away from Amazon S3. This will save us thousands of dollars
a month -- the payback period for the project is 3 months. (!) That includes
the engineering cost to set up the new server. This particular project is
compelling because we don't need S3's other advantages, we just need raw
storage.

Moral: Don't be dogmatic about decisions in your business. Just weigh the pros
and cons (including cost) carefully.

~~~
maukdaddy
Hence the reason I said "almost". There will always be exceptions.

When looking at a cost/benefit don't forget the following costs:

    
    
      Power
      Cooling
      Space (lease costs)
      Administration
      Backup
      Redundancy
      Decommissioning (you don't just throw the server away do you?)

------
byteclub
I think what that post is trying to say is this: focus on your core
competency. Amazon is good at cloud computing, Netflix is good at
renting/streaming movies.

However, there are some cases where "core competency" is a vague term. Take
Facebook for example - could they outsource their infrastructure to somebody
else? Given how much data they have to handle, probably not. When you get to
the point where scaling requires very low-level (Hunch) or massive (Google or
Facebook) optimizations/deployments, you might be entering the business of
handling intricate infrastructure yourself.

~~~
SRSimko
I work at an IaaS company and we hear the same thing daily most want to focus
on what they do best and often it's not server hugging.

Also companies that embrace the cloud have changed how they do things because
they see the efficiencies and recognize that they don't want to be in the
business of managing servers.

------
tcskeptic
I look in on this stuff from the enterprise side of things with interest. I
want to get out of the business of hosting an internal datacenter entirely as
soon as possible (that decades old, and apparently intractable AS400
accounting system notwithstanding), and would prefer to move things cloudward.
Right now though, it seems that we are either limited to niche players or
proprietary solutions(AWS, etc.), and the risk of being held hostage by an
underperforming vendor remains high. We are experimenting with certain
applications (CRM, for example) being hosted in the cloud. Until there is a
standard cloud-hosting platform, with multiple large players offering services
that would allow us to very simply move from one service to another without
redisigning major parts of applications there won't be much movement to the
cloud in our space. (part of this is a legacy of horrendous application design
in the enterprise space, part of it is just the natural legacy of having much
older legacy applications than web companies do, and part of it is a
reflection of large organizations being terribly risk averse.)

------
somic
This is indeed an interesting post but it doesn't answer the question why they
chose Amazon. It focuses on why they chose not to expand within their own
datacenter.

~~~
pchristensen
Who would be a viable alternative vendor to Amazon at Netflix's scale?

~~~
sgk284
Rackspace?

------
epoxyhockey
I'm still apprehensive about entrusting a single party to handle all of my
infrastructure. Technical and business failures occur in even the best of the
hosting companies.

Granted, my computing needs are basic compared to the needs of Netflix.

~~~
wmf
In-house IT is also a single party.

~~~
epoxyhockey
I think the motivation for in-house IT to succeed is greater than a 3rd party
with their SLA. But, I am also coming from the viewpoint that geographically
dispersed servers through multiple hosting companies reduces the 'single point
of failure' scenario.

------
frossie
_"We’re not very good at predicting customer growth or device engagement."_

But they are good enough to admit that, and plan accordingly. Hat off.

------
shimi
Netflix have done the same thing with Roku, they like to focus on what they do
best

------
redwood
Amazon has plenty of spare cycles most of the year (hence Mechanical Turk and
all this excess datacenter capacity they can contract out). \- They have this
b/c they need to be able to accommodate their extrmeley peaky demand (i.e.
holiday shopping season!!!) \- I wonder if this means netflix streaming will
be significantly for flaky in the run-up to Xmas :)

~~~
wmf
EC2 doesn't run on spare capacity (although perhaps Amazon buys from EC2 in
competition with other customers) and Netflix streaming doesn't run on EC2
anyway.

