Netflix wrote about its move to AWS and how well things worked.
5 Lessons We’ve Learned Using AWS
In my last post I talked about some of the reasons we chose AWS as our computing platform. We’re about one year into our transition to AWS from our own data centers. We’ve learned a lot so far, and I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the mistakes we’ve made and some of the lessons we’ve learned.
1. Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.
If you’re used to designing and deploying applications in your own data centers, you need to be
prepared to unlearn a lot of what you know. Seek to understand and embrace the differences operating in a cloud environment.
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5. Commit yourself.When I look back at what the team has accomplished this year in our AWS migration, I’m truly amazed. But it didn’t always feel this good. AWS is only a few years old, and building at a high scale within it is a pioneering enterprise today. There were some dark days as we struggled with the sheer size of the task we’d taken on, and some of the differences between how AWS operates vs. our own data centers.
As you run into the hurdles, have the grit and the conviction to fight through them. Our CEO, Reed Hastings, has not only been fully on board with this migration, he is the person who motivated it! His commitment, the commitment of the technology leaders across the company, helped us push through to success when we could have chosen to retreat instead.
AWS is a tremendous suite of services, getting better all the time, and some big technology companies are running successfully there today. You can too! We hope some of our mistakes and the lessons we’ve learned can help you do it well.
-john ciancutti.
Part of the commitment is international growth. Here is a post for a Netflix International Engineering Director.
Director of Engineering – International Services
ECommerce and Systems Engineering | Los Gatos, CA
The opportunity is compelling: to lead the Internationalization of Netflix Services, a fast growing and highly admired company. Fueled by the broad appeal of being able to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes, Netflix subscriber growth has been accelerating for the last several years and is now more than 50% year-over-year. At the same time Netflix is well positioned to expand internationally in 2011. Our upside potential has never been greater—both domestically and internationally. And never has there been a more promising time to join Netflix.
