
Netflix teases desktops-as-a-service offering aimed at VFX creators - kiyanwang
https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/20/netflix_netfx_desktop_as_a_service/
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Sephiroth87
My partner works in VFX, and watching them work during quarantine, the
experience was poor to say the least (aside from the speed from which they
went from "remote work is not even an option", to it working).

This seems like a good step forward, but I think the real potential is in
building the frontend software to be as lightweight as possible, to run on any
computer, and just put the previews rendering on the cloud (so for example,
instead of wasting bandwidth streaming ui elements / desktop interface you
could just send actual useful data)

Edit: another good point of this model, is that for example, occasionally
workstations turn off / stop responding / etc.. I don't have much IT
experience and know how much you can mitigate that, but they had to often had
someone still on premise to fix things. Going completely cloud based would be
much more "quarantine" friendly in that regard...

~~~
dynamite-ready
That's an interesting idea. I originally wanted to post about how cool the
virtual CGI workstation concept was, but what might be better still, is a
system / platform where an artist can do as much as they can on their local
machine, and outsource requests for preview / final renders to cloud based
machines, while streaming the result back to the enduser, with some amount of
lag when moving cameras around a preview.

Wouldn't want any amount of lag in the modelling process though. Even disk
pauses and garbage collection can prove distracting with that kind of work.

~~~
Sephiroth87
Yeah, for the 3d side of things it gets a bit trickier, vs 2d (compositing,
grading, etc) where the interface itself could trivially run on anything, and
you just need rendered video frames.

But even for 3d I would thing a "streaming based" 3d protocol or something
would be much better than just an RDP connection

~~~
Const-me
RDP connection already does all that. Essentially, it connects client PC's GPU
to server's CPU. The software running on the server ain't aware, it calls
regular D3D11 APIs and they just work, except for rare edge cases when it
doesn't.

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danpalmer
Netflix is famous for putting as much on AWS as possible. AWS has a desktop as
a service offering, so is this competing with AWS, or is it a slightly more
complete product built on top of the AWS option?

Edit: in the original blog post linked to from The Register article it seems
this is not public. This would lead me to assume that it is in fact running on
AWS like most of the rest of Netflix's infrastructure, and that Netflix are
providing a useful distribution/configuration/potentially free layer on top.
Not to down-play the importance of this, I can see this being really useful
for creators.

~~~
jbob2000
You didn't read the article. This is a service for VFX artists who are working
on Netflix titles. It's a competitive advantage for Netflix if their VFX
artists can work faster than others while working remotely. These desktops
won't try to compete with Amazon or the general market.

~~~
lucideer
I read the article. There is nothing to suggest this is not a public offering,
nor any mention of it being specifically for people working on Netflix titles.

Did you read a different article?

\--

Edit: turns out they did read a different article, which is here[0] and does
strongly imply it's not intended to be a public offering.

[0] [https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-
co...](https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-community-
with-the-netfx-platform-35fdf604909c)

~~~
jbob2000
> Netflix says the service offers “virtual workstations, integrated storage
> and full access to secure rendering in a connected environment” and is
> intended to “provide collaborators frictionless access to infrastructure to
> meet Netflix’s demand for VFX services around the world as our library of
> original content continues to grow.”

~~~
lucideer
So, firstly: there are two articles. The linked HN article, and the original
Netflix blogpost (which is not linked here on HN, but is linked by The
Register).

From the Netflix blogpost, it seems you are correct. The author of The
Register article seems to have misinterpreted and is _definitely_ discussing a
prospective public offering.

\--

The 2nd sentence you quoted implies that people working on Netflix titles will
use it, but does not imply exclusivity.

The 1st sentence I don't really understand what you're reading from it...
sounds like a public offering to me.

In addition to those sentences, The Register article is chock full of direct
references to it being a public offering, not an internal vendor offering.

Perhaps dang or another mod can change to the source article which is less
misleading: [https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-
co...](https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-community-
with-the-netfx-platform-35fdf604909c)

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mroche
An interesting goal to aim for, but not completely a new concept to us. It
feels like a sibling-evolution to what Foundry Athera was aiming for, except
in this case geared to Netflix's needs, rather than attempting to be an
scaling commodity. The interesting part is going full-cloud for everything,
that's the big kicker. It'll let them deploy across DC's globally so that
artists in different regions can have a more optimized experience. I'm very
curious about how they're handling storage, though. We push massive amounts of
volatile data everyday, so they're going to have to have a central source and
likely some kind of caching mechanism between DC's, otherwise there's going to
be a non-trivial bottleneck with storage.

As an industry, there's been a shift to VDI (through Teradici PCoIP and
similar systems) over the past several years and it is _amazing_ from an admin
perspective. In studio, an artist can't tell the difference between a local
physical workstation and a virtual one in the studio's datacenter. And now all
of the workstations have central management consoles if needed and are located
in the same spot for physical maintenance. And for remote work, there's a tad
more latency and you're at the whims of ISPs, but it's very workable. In terms
of bandwidth, it's not a whole lot. We're primarily supporting dual-monitor
1920x1200 and after a small handful of optimizations that maxes out at
~50-60Mbps needed by the end users, often less with the way PCoIP works.

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glaberficken
Given that Netflix has a vested interest in trying to pump out a high volume
of content. Can this be a play to help comoditize the post-production costs
associated?

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cm2187
What is the value added over connecting remotely to the office workstation? In
my experience, video over RDP is terrible. Are they using a better protocol?

~~~
jon-wood
RDP is indeed terrible for anything involving video or 3D, but there are
companies out there that specialise in much lower latency desktop streaming.
As an example Parsec started out focused on allowing people to run AWS
instances for gaming rather than having a beefy desktop at home, but appear to
be pivoting into remote desktop access for creatives:
[https://parsecgaming.com/teams/](https://parsecgaming.com/teams/)

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swiley
IMO: for cooperate computers desktop-as-a-service is the way to go. Of course
that means maintaining two machines (possibly one in a VM.)

~~~
jedieaston
It's just annoyingly expensive for Windows boxes, with all of the licensing
and stuff. Microsoft includes licenses for running VDI in Azure with Microsoft
365 now, but it still requires a full on-prem Active Directory setup (which
you probably don't have if you are using Microsoft 365). And then on top of
those licenses, you also have to get Citrix/VMWare licenses if you don't want
to use Azure. It becomes more expensive than hiring a IT person to just manage
all of the laptops you deploy everywhere (except in certain scenarios like
healthcare).

I want to live in a world where we all have SunRays and I just plug in a card
and show my session running in the cloud, but it's too darn expensive still
(and everyone in enterprise is too scared to try and build one themselves
since the big vendors have Microsoft's blessing when building their
solutions). That one time I had a VDI at an internship, boy was it magical.
Being able to walk into a conference room, type my password and show people
something was extremely powerful.

