Netflix’s journey to the Cloud started all the way back in 2008 when the company experienced a major database corruption – an event that hindered their ability to deliver DVDs out to their customers. That’s when the idea of a Cloud migration came about. Netflix needed a highly reliable and scalable platform like the Cloud to host their systems. Prior to 2015, they migrated the majority of their systems to the Cloud with the help of Amazon Web Services. In early January 2016, Netflix reported the completion of their Cloud migration and shut down the last remaining pieces of their data center used by their streaming service.
One reason it took so long to make the shift was because Netflix had to rebuild nearly all of its software before the start of their Cloud journey to minimize the risk of disruption. The company built a series of tools such as “Chaos Monkey” – a service which identifies groups of systems and randomly takes them offline to ensure Netflix’s safety without affecting customers. Netflix’s “Simian Army” consists of services including Chaos Monkey, Janitor Monkey, and Conformity Monkey in the Cloud that generate failures and detect abnormalities to test Netflix’s ability to survive them.
Since their Cloud migration, the company has seen numerous benefits. They have eight times more streaming members compared to 2008 and are experiencing a viewing growth by three orders of magnitude.
The flexibility offered by the Cloud allows Netflix to add thousands of virtual servers to support their long-term expansion. On January 6, Netflix became a global force, expanding its service to over 130 new countries. Their Cloud migration has allowed them to offer better and more enjoyable streaming services to Netflix members all over the world.
“We rely on the cloud for all of our scalable computing and storage needs – our business logic, distributed databases and big data processing/analytics, recommendations, transcoding, and hundreds of other functions that make up the Netflix application,” Netflix stated on their company blog. “Video is delivered through Netflix Open Connect, our content delivery network that is distributed globally to efficiently deliver our bits to members’ devices.”
One of the main reasons why the company decided to migrate to the Cloud was because of the cost benefits. With the Cloud, they are continuously able to grow and reach economies of scale that wouldn’t be possible with their own hosted data center.
The technology behind Netflix streaming has come a long way within the past eight years, and the company is continuing to reach new heights with the possibilities offered by the Cloud.
“…it feels great to finally not be constrained by the limitations we’ve previously faced,” Netflix stated. “As the cloud is still quite new to many of us in the industry, there are many questions to answer and problems to solve. Through initiatives such as Netflix Open Source, we hope to continue collaborating with great technology minds out there and together address all of these challenges.”
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