

Netflix Loses Its Cloud Guru to a VC Firm - ckoglmeier
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-07/netflix-loses-its-cloud-guru-to-a-vc-firm

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latch
I wish we could observe a parallel universe where Netflix went a different
route and stayed with dedicated or went with colocation. I'd love to compare
the outcome with their decision to go with AWS (minus CDN).

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imbriaco
They came from a datacenter world before they moved to AWS. The problem was
that they had a traditional enterprise IT organization with big process and
relying on Oracle, SANs, and all the same old enterprise IT solutions. It was
built to run a company that was focused on operating warehouses and logistics,
and not an agile web company.

Moving to the cloud was as much an organizational transformation as it was a
technical one. And the move to AWS has paid them dividends in organizational
and technical agility, as well as execution speed. I will never believe that
it saved them money when compared to a well run physical infrastructure that
was more purpose built for what they do, but they did not demonstrate the
ability to run a physical infrastructure well so it's kind of moot.

It worked out great for them and gave Adrian some great stories to share.
Congrats to him on the move to Battery, that's a fantastic team.

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jnsaff2
Here is his own blog, maybe more interesting to read:
[http://perfcap.blogspot.com/](http://perfcap.blogspot.com/)

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avenger123
Does Netflix get special pricing for AWS? With their scale, they could
probably negotiate with Amazon for lower rates.

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zorked
Certainly, see for example [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-
instances/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances/), search for "Scale
with your Business". Similar discounts exist for most of their other services.

~~~
rtpg
I remember reading something about how AWS is pretty much running very close
to at cost (super razor-thin margins, just like the Amazon shops
themselves),but seeing these numbers seems to imply otherwise (20% is a big
chunk of change).

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raverbashing
"AWS is pretty much running very close to at cost (super razor-thin margins"

Compare the Amazon price with other VPSs.

It's a different service, yes, but it's not even close, not even if you
reserve the instances (it's been a while since I did the math though)

But for small scale, I recommend strongly _against_ AWS

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nasalgoat
Isn't the opposite true? It's fine for under 10 instances when you're first
starting up and still flexible, but over that you're better off going colo?

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dmourati
I've described AWS as a great "deal" for very small and for very large
customers. For people in the middle, not so much.

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Xorlev
Also depends on what you consider a deal -- the lower tier hardware works for
a Wordpress blog, but not necessarily for much more. For the price, a good
Linode or even a dedicated server will get you more bang for the buck.

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michaelochurch
Foolish me. I thought this tweet
([https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/42071605314074214...](https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/420716053140742144))
was a joke.

