- AWS is Netflix’s only cloud computing platform
- But AWS is also part of Amazon, which owns Amazon Prime Video, a huge competitor to Netflix
- Netflix engineers have been working hard to track how many resources they are using on AWS
Netflix, the world’s most popular streaming platform, may dominate home entertainment, but it is grappling with one of its biggest operational challenges: the cost of cloud computing.
Despite its image as a technology leader, Netflix admits it doesn’t fully know how much it’s spending on the cloud, considering its cloud provider AWS is Amazon – Owner of Prime Video, one of Netflix’s biggest competitors.
Netflix’s cloud infrastructure relies on AWS for computing, storage and networking to support its global streaming service. Engineering teams use self-service tools to create and deploy applications, resulting in large amounts of data. However, the complexity of this ecosystem makes it difficult for Netflix to understand exactly how resources are used and how costs accrue.
Keep content flowing
Netflix’s Platform Data Science Engineering (DSE) team was tasked with solving this problem. The team’s mission is to help the company’s engineers understand resource usage, efficiency and associated costs.
However, as Netflix acknowledged in a statement Recent blog postswhose cloud cost management is still a work in progress.
To address its own challenges, Netflix developed two tools: Foundation Platform Profile (FPD) and Cloud Efficiency Analysis (CEA). FPD provides a centralized data layer with a standardized model that aggregates data from applications such as Apache Spark. CEA applies business logic on top of this to generate costs and ownership attributions, providing insights into efficiency and usage patterns.
The obstacles are huge. Netflix’s vast infrastructure includes services with multiple owners, different cost heuristics, and a multi-tenant platform that complicates tracking.
Data latency and platform-specific customization further add to the complexity. Regular audits and data transformations are necessary to maintain accuracy, but the company admits it doesn’t yet fully understand its cloud spending.
Going forward, Netflix said it plans to expand its tools and incorporate predictive analytics and machine learning to optimize usage and detect cost anomalies.
While the company is working to improve its approach, its situation highlights a surprising irony: The world’s most popular streaming platform, which relies on rival technology to deliver its service, is still calculating the true cost of keeping content flowing. .