Netflix has been moving huge portions of its streaming operation to Amazon Web Services (AWS) for years now, and it says it has finally completed its giant shift to the cloud. "We are happy to report that in early January of 2016, after seven years of diligent effort, we have finally completed our cloud migration and shut down the last remaining data center bits used by our streaming service," Netflix said in a blog post that it plans to publish at noon Eastern today. (The blog should go up at this link.)
Netflix operates "many tens of thousands of servers and many tens of petabytes of storage" in the Amazon cloud, Netflix VP of cloud and platform engineering Yury Izrailevsky told Ars in an interview.
Netflix had earlier planned to complete the shift by the end of last summer.
"Billing and payments was the last remaining piece. We wanted to make sure we do it right; obviously, there is a lot of privacy concerns around customer data," Izrailevsky said. Previously, the applications and data related to billing and payments were in a cage Netflix rented at a colocation facility.
With this last piece finished, Netflix's streaming business no longer operates any of its own data center space. But not everything is in Amazon.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @07:53PM
<sarcasm>Yes, let's concentrate as much as we can in the hands of these few, benevolent players in the market. Your customer service will only be better because of it</sarcasm>
Now you too can feel that 0.1% not covered by the 99.9% uptime-promise.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday February 12 2016, @08:29PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday February 12 2016, @08:52PM
I'm actually surprised Netflix wouldn't be running its own data centers. They're a big enough chunk of internet traffic that running their base load on their own stuff, and using AWS for scalability/demand surges should logically be more cost effective. For regular joes like me, it can be cheaper to pay Amazon to run a server, than to run it myself, and amazon still makes a profit doing so despite being cheaper than I could do it, due to the economies of scale they benefit from.
But Netflix is big enough to realize those economies of scale for itself I would think.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Friday February 12 2016, @09:00PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @09:07PM
"Oh... so you're going to throttle Amazon, now?"
<relaxed voice>Oh... no.... we just DPI everything and anything we detect that looks like video and is not XFinity, BAM, 20kbps<relaxed voice>
(Score: 2) by pendorbound on Wednesday February 17 2016, @07:41PM
I'll see your DPI and raise you an SSL...
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:04AM
Well, Amazon has their own streaming service. Amazon may decide to throttle Netflix.
Also, I wonder how much they learned from Netflix's demands to set up their own service.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:46AM
I have both Amazon Prime and Netflix, but I have Prime for the shipping not the videos. The video feed is just an added perk but I suspect that for those who can afford only one service, Netflix would be the more popular.
Look at it this way: Amazon probably doesn't make any money on the free Prime video service because people get Prime for other reasons, instead, it makes money on videos the way Apple does -- by selling or renting them when they can't be found free on Netflix.
In contrast, Netflix doesn't sell any specific video, but they do use plenty of servers and storage. So Netflix is not actually a direct competitor with Amazon (if you consider the free Prime videos to be an add-on rather than something people search out), and while Netflix does well, Amazon profits two ways: hosting Netflix content and by selling videos Netflix doesn't have. If Netflix goes under, Amazon loses the server business and is not all that likely to be a real danger to Apple. Anyway, it's possible that this might make Amazon less likely to sabotage Netflix than more likely.
(Score: 1) by Capt. Obvious on Sunday February 14 2016, @07:09AM
The key you seem to be missing is "yet". Amazon isn't giving you video out of th egoodness of the hearts. Nor or they giving you free streaming for the same reason. They're going to make money somehow off streaming.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday February 13 2016, @06:44PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Friday February 12 2016, @08:36PM
OK, so who would you pick that is better at cloud than AWS? Because I can tell you that I rather have AWS than just about anything else. Why would Netflix go with a smaller, shittier player just to maintain some sort of plurality that does not benefit its bottom line?
I'm sorry but if the other Cloud providers want to compete with AWS, they need to get their shit together and innovate. I went to a Linode event few months back where the basement dweller they had out there to do some sort of technical presentation heard AWS from the crowd when asking a question and remarked "Well AWS sucks." WTF does that mean? It sucks because it has things like CloudSearch as a service which you do not? It just came across as pure unfounded vitriol. So no they didn't get any of my business.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday February 12 2016, @08:51PM
So where does this leave the CDN providers like Akamai, Level3, and LimeLight that were (are?) partnered with Netflix?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @08:58PM
On the receiving end (of monies that is) of peering agreements...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 12 2016, @10:04PM
So you're saying that, wherever there's migration, there's also rape?
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday February 12 2016, @10:23PM
Wow, you really snuck that one in (through the border).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday February 12 2016, @11:48PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:27AM
Amazon is expensive as hell to use for content distribution. They probably have content on edge servers still at Akami, L3 etc and just use Amazon for initial staging and storage of the content. AWS has a ton of services though. They mention their billing app, but you can easily put together a Pandora type of recommendations system on Amazon and run it for pennies per (K)users while having it scale in real time to meet demands.
Don't get me wrong, I hate AWS personally for most computing tasks, but I would be hard pressed to make a better fit than Netflix for them. Remember Netflix is more than just the video stream you're watching.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @09:04PM
All your eggs in an Amazon basket. So it took them seven years to move all their streaming bit over there. What would they do if Amazon tries to bilk them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @09:09PM
Stop thinking doom... Think happy thoughts, like bunnies and flowers and girls with the wind playing through their hair...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Friday February 12 2016, @09:11PM
As a matter of economics, this doesn't make sense to me.
Conclusion: Netflix is directly economically enabling a competitor to compete with them.
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @09:14PM
America's outsourcing policy :)
In which case, go Netflix, you're finally acting American enough! :)
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday February 12 2016, @09:30PM
You think all of Amazon is going to stay as a single corporate umbrella forever? I can see Amazon splitting up into several businesses within decade.
While yes, amazon streaming does indeed compete in the same product arena, but a lot more people than you can think of actually have both because the content does not overlap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mechanicjay on Friday February 12 2016, @10:42PM
You think all of Amazon is going to stay as a single corporate umbrella forever? I can see Amazon splitting up into several businesses within decade.
I actually see it moving towards a Alphabet -> Google type relationship -- remaining under the same corporate umbrella. Though with distinct business units, this Netflix deal makes a little bit more sense.
While yes, amazon streaming does indeed compete in the same product arena, but a lot more people than you can think of actually have both because the content does not overlap.
Agreed, as I do have both as well, and there actually is some amount of over lapping content, but not a whole lot. Regardless, if you're so keen to look towards the future where changes in Amazon corporate structure benefit Netflix, who's to say the Product strategy at Prime streaming won't change in that same timeframe to utterly screw Netflix with 90% content overlap....
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:51AM
I really don't see Prime video as a direct competitor to Netflix. It's an add on service -- Amazon is much more like Apple in that it tries to sell or rent videos while Netflix has no individual video sales. The free Prime videos are just a way to advertise to people that Apple isn't the only option to buy. Other than that, what does Prime get them?
(Score: 2) by shrewdsheep on Friday February 12 2016, @09:35PM
This. And on top of this it should be cheaper to operate base load in terms of bandwidth/storage yourself as you would not have to pay the profit margin of the hired party.
So, why did they do it?
(Score: 2) by jcross on Friday February 12 2016, @09:53PM
There must be a reason. Based on everything I've read those guys are on the very leading edge of cloud operations know-how. They may not be smarter than us, but they definitely have more insider knowledge, skill, and experience at doing what they do.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SrLnclt on Friday February 12 2016, @09:37PM
Amazon streaming is a prime competitor with Netflix
I see what you did there.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday February 12 2016, @10:10PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 12 2016, @10:51PM
iPhone 7 Processor To Be Manufactured Solely by TSMC [macrumors.com].
And even if that rumour turns out false, it's clear Apple have been trying to move away from Samsung as a supplier.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday February 12 2016, @11:08PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday February 12 2016, @11:46PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by nolxiii on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:07AM
I'm sure the lawyers worked in plenty of CYA into the deal. If Amazon can do it cheaper then doing it themselves could only make them less competitive.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:54AM
are either Amazon or Netflix top tier (tier1) internet providers ? Based on this info no, so maybe there is a financial benefit to combining their traffic.
http://drpeering.net/FAQ/Who-are-the-Tier-1-ISPs.php [drpeering.net]
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:39AM
Exactly. What do we need Netflix for? Amazon can provide the same content for a lower price. Obviously there is a hidden reason somewhere. Call it conspiracy or whatever.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday February 12 2016, @11:28PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @12:17AM
Yes, and also in late September 2015 [venturebeat.com].
So not only could you not "Netflix and chill", but you couldn't whine about it on Reddit, start an endless first-world-problems blog about it on Medium, and your Nest thermostat was probably outputting errors all over the place. Meanwhile I had no problem watching DVDs, playing PC games that don't have online DRM, or listening to music via locally stored files, CDs, or vinyl. Someone please tell me again why AWS is so "glorious".
AWS is the "little girl with the little curl" (except nowhere near as cute or endearing [google.com]). When AWS is good, it's really really good, and when it is bad, it is horrid. And if you have to do any kind of system backend analysis on performance problems that would be in your realm of control for an on-premise or private cloud deployment... well, you have my sympathies.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by goodie on Saturday February 13 2016, @02:51AM
Netflix is a big company, but there are many bigger than them. Took them 7 years to migrate, dedicating so much of their attention to this effort. Remember that number, 7 years next time you see a commercial that says that "moving to the cloud is as easy as one click" or some stupid marketing crap.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @06:14AM
How many large brick-and-mortar branches and regional HQs does Netflix have? How many merged companies does it have in its belly that are still in the process of being digested (e.g. still running their own systems with "some" integration and migration in progress ).
(Score: 2) by goodie on Sunday February 14 2016, @12:38AM
Yep, I would not think they have too many legacy systems around unlike most companies. And they are a tech company so they likely have the people in house etc. Any regular company would deal with consultants, satellite offices, crappy internet connections, etc.