NETFLIX-AWS CASE STUDY

In this blog, we are going to learn how Netflix uses AWS cloud to run its business. AWS provides resources to Netflix to run their application over the internet we can say Netflix only have an idea or content its all infrastructure is managed by the AWS cloud

Netflix

Streaming Media is booming and for some years now, We have seen various streaming platforms battling to make their place in Media and Entertainment Industry. But if you’re a fan of streaming media and is your pastime to watch web series or documentaries which are exclusive, One name which always tops the list is — Netflix.

Netflix is the world’s leading internet television network, with more than 193 million members in more than 190 countries enjoying 125 million hours of TV shows and movies each day. According to fortune.com, its services alone constitute about 15% of all the world’s internet bandwidth. It has traveled 2008, there was a major hardware failure in the data centers of Netflix. After analysis, Netflix revealed that there was a database corruption event in their shipping system which resulted in massive shipment delays for 3 days. In concern of this event, Netflix began moving to AWS the following year. a long journey from its DVD sales and email rental services to a leader in the streaming media industry.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Amazon Web Services is a subsidiary of Amazon which provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and government on a pay-as-you-go basis. AWS provides a wide range of services like storage, computing, security, database, developer tools, machine learning, internet of things, game tech, media services, networking & content delivery, and many more. It was launched in 2006 and has seen rapid growth in the business. They have a global infrastructure and holds a market share of about 51% and offer more than 2500 services and features. They have huge data centers which are basically known as availability zones.

How Netflix uses AWS?

As we have discussed, After major hardware failure, Netflix began switching to AWS and utilize their resources instead of their own. Netflix uses AWS for nearly all its computing and storage needs, including distributed databases, Big Data processing/analytics, recommendation engines, video transcoding, and more — hundreds of other functions which in total use more than 1,00,000 server instances on AWS. Let's see how Netflix utilizes AWS

Amazon EC2 — Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a service that Netflix uses to create a high-performance cloud on which they run their servers. Netflix is also responsible for transcoding different types of media sources to a large number of media formats to support all the devices. The encoding service may require hundreds of thousands of compute hours to be distributed at moment’s notice where they are needed most.

Amazon EC2 Autoscaling â€” AWS also provides an EC2 autoscaling feature which helps Netflix to maintain application availability and allows them to automatically add or remove EC2 instances according to conditions they define. It is one of the most important features of AWS which Netflix uses. It is also cost-efficient as it is only added when needed.

AWS Lambda â€” Netflix uses AWS Lambda to build rule-based self-managing infrastructure and replace the inefficient processes to help in reducing the rate of errors and save valuable time. In simpler words, Netflix pay only for the compute time they consume.

VPC Flow Logs â€” VPC Flow Logs is an AWS feature that enables you to capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams(KDS)— Amazon Kinesis Data Stream helps Netflix to improve customer experience by centralizing the flow logs and monitoring the network in real-time. Amazon Kinesis Data Streams processes multiple terabytes of log data each day, yet events show up in the analytics in seconds. This helps Netflix to discover and respond to issues in real-time, ensuring high availability and a great customer experience.

Amazon Kinesis Data Stream (KDS)

So, these were the few products that Netflix use to keep running their business worldwide. Almost all of the Netflix infrastructure works on AWS cloud now and it helped Netflix extensively in terms of cost reduction, increasing the number of customers, management of customer and employee data, scalable computing, and storage.

It was a perfect decision by Netflix to move to AWS cloud computing so they can focus solely on creating a better and more enjoyable streaming experience for Netflix members wherever they are.

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