1) Cloud native applications are built to take advantage of cloud computing resources like dynamically provisioned micro-services and distributed ephemeral components. 2) Netflix has transitioned to being a cloud native application built on an open source platform using AWS for scalable infrastructure, but also uses other providers for services not fully supported by AWS like content delivery and DNS. 3) What has changed is developers are freed from being the bottleneck through decentralization and automation of operations, allowing for greater agility, innovation, and business competitiveness in the cloud native model.

1. Cloud Native Applications:
What Changed
May 2013
Adrian Cockcroft
@adrianco #netflixcloud @NetflixOSS
http://www.linkedin.com/in/adriancockcroft

2. We are Engineers
We solve hard problems
We build amazing and complex things
We fix things when they break

3. We strive for perfection
Perfect code
Perfect hardware
Perfectly operated

4. But perfection takes too long…
So we compromise
Time to market vs. Quality
Utopia remains out of reach

5. Where time to market wins big
Making a land-grab
Disrupting competitors (OODA)
Anything delivered as web services

6. How Soon?
Code features in days instead of months
Get hardware in minutes instead of weeks
Incident response in seconds instead of hours

7. Tipping the Balance
Utopia Dystopia

8. A new engineering challenge
Construct a highly agile and highly
available service from ephemeral and
often broken components

9. Inspiration

10. What Changed?
Developers are the bottleneck
Platform manages service delivery
Agility and implementation speed wins

11. Examples of Cloud Native Apps
Everything Google or Amazon does
Some startup web services
Netflix

12. Netflix Streaming
A Cloud Native Application based on
an open source platform

13. Netflix Member Web Site Home Page
Personalization Driven – How Does It Work?

14. How Netflix Streaming Works
Customer Device
(PC, PS3, TV…)
Web Site or
Discovery API
User Data
Personalization
Streaming API
DRM
QoS Logging
OpenConnect
CDN Boxes
CDN
Management and
Steering
Content Encoding
Consumer
Electronics
AWS Cloud
Services
CDN Edge
Locations

15. Some Strategic Questions
What changed…

16. The AWS Question
Why does Netflix use AWS when
Amazon Prime is a competitor?

17. Netflix vs. Amazon Prime
• Do retailers competing with Amazon use AWS?
– Yes, lots of them, Netflix is no different
• Does Prime have a platform advantage?
– No, because Netflix gets to run on AWS
• Does Netflix take Amazon Prime seriously?
– Yes, but so far Prime isn’t impacting our business

18. Amazon Video 1.31%
18x Prime
25x Prime
Nov
2012
Streaming
Bandwidth
March
2013
Mean
Bandwidth
+39% 6mo

19. The Google Cloud Question
Why doesn’t Netflix use Google
Cloud as well as AWS?

20. Google Cloud – Wait and See
Pro’s
• Cloud Native
• Huge scale for internal apps
• Exposing internal services
• Nice clean API model
• Starting a price war
• Fast for what it does
• Rapid start & minute billing
Con’s
• In beta until last week
• No big customers yet
• Missing many key features
• Different arch model
• Missing billing options
• No SSD or huge instances
• Zone maintenance windows
But: Anyone interested is welcome to port NetflixOSS components to Google Cloud

21. Cloud Wars: Price and Performance
AWS vs.
GCS War
Private
Cloud
What Changed:
Everyone using
AWS or GCS gets
the price cuts and
performance
improvements, as
they happen. No
need to switch
vendor.
No Change:
Locked in for
three years.

22. The DIY Question
Why doesn’t Netflix build and run its
own cloud?

23. Fitting Into Public Scale
Public
Grey
Area
Private
1,000 Instances 100,000 Instances
Netflix FacebookStartups

24. How big is Public?
AWS upper bound estimate based on the number of public IP Addresses
Every provisioned instance gets a public IP by default
AWS Maximum Possible Instance Count 3.7 Million
Growth >10x in Three Years, >2x Per Annum

25. DIY Alternatives: what could
Netflix do with $100M to invest?
Build a datacenter, Launch in a new country, or
fund the next “House of Cards”?
All payback over several years
Grow the business!

26. The Alternative Supplier
Question
What if there is no clear leader for a
feature, or AWS doesn’t have what
we need?

27. Things We Don’t Use AWS For
SaaS Applications – Pagerduty, Appdynamics
Content Delivery Service
DNS Service

28. CDN Scale
AWS CloudFront
Akamai
Limelight
Level 3
Netflix
Openconnect
YouTube
Gigabits Terabits
NetflixFacebookStartups

29. Content Delivery Service
Open Source Hardware Design + FreeBSD, bird, nginx
see openconnect.netflix.com

30. DNS Service
AWS Route53 is missing too many features
Multiple vendor strategy Dyn, Ultra, Route53
Abstracted (broken) DNS APIs with Denominator

32. Managing Multi-Region Availability
Cassandra Replicas
Zone A
Cassandra Replicas
Zone B
Cassandra Replicas
Zone C
Regional Load Balancers
Cassandra Replicas
Zone A
Cassandra Replicas
Zone B
Cassandra Replicas
Zone C
Regional Load Balancers
UltraDNS
DynECT
DNS
AWS
Route53
Denominator – manage traffic via multiple DNS providers
Denominator

33. What Changed?
Get out of the way of innovation
Best of breed, by the hour
Choices based on scale
Cost
reduction
Slow down
developers
Less
competitive
Less revenue
Lower
margins
Process
reduction
Speed up
developers
More
competitive
More
revenue
Higher
margins

34. Cloud Native – What Changed?
Master copies of data are cloud resident
Dynamically provisioned micro-services
Services are distributed and ephemeral

35. How to get to Cloud Native?
Freedom and Responsibility for Developers
Decentralize and Automate Ops Activities
Integrate DevOps into the Business Organization

36. A Cloud Native Open Source Platform
See netflix.github.com

37. Boosting the @NetflixOSS Ecosystem
See netflix.github.com
Come to my tutorial this afternoon!

38. Takeaway
NetflixOSS makes it easier for everyone to become Cloud Native
What changed is the speed and agility of the integrated Cloud
Native BusDevOps organization
@adrianco #netflixcloud @NetflixOSS