Netflix Cloud Cost Challenges
Tracking cloud resources and their costs can be a daunting task for any organization, even for a giant like Netflix. In a recent blog post, Netflix shared insights about its cloud efficiency measures, shedding light on the challenges they face in managing their AWS infrastructure.
Netflix heavily relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for its cloud needs, and they have self-service tools in place for engineering teams to provision apps in the cloud. To help teams better understand their resource usage and costs, Netflix has a Platform DSE team that assists in making cost-conscious decisions using their datasets.
Two key tools have been developed by the Platform DSE team:
1. Foundational Platform Data (FPD) – a centralized data layer for all platform data with standardized data processing methods.
2. Cloud Efficiency Analytics (CEA) – an analytics tool built on FPD that provides efficiency metrics across various business use cases.
The complexity of the datasets generated by Netflix is attributed to the vast business infrastructure and platform-specific features. With services having multiple owners and unique cost heuristics, maintaining data completeness and correctness poses a significant challenge. The team is continuously working on improving data insights and coverage to gain better control over cloud spending.
Netflix aims to utilize predictive analytics and machine learning for optimizing resource usage and identifying anomalies in costs. Even a streaming giant like Netflix acknowledges the need to enhance its cloud cost management practices. If they struggle with it, it’s a common challenge for many organizations.
