Intuit CTOF 2011 - Netflix for Mobile in the Cloud

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Netflix for Mobile in the Cloud

Siddharth “Sid” Anand

May 2011

Intuit Proprietary & Confidential

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A Very Special Thanks to …

… the following folks for helping with the presentation: •  Ashish Khivesara – IPhone/Android UI Development

•  Daniel Jacobson – Director of API •  Shyan-Ming Perng – PS3/IPad/IPhone UI Development

•  Mike Cohen – API Development

•  Yury Izrailevsky – Director of Cloud Systems

… the entire company for pulling together to make Netflix for Mobile in the Cloud a reality!

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Our Business

No Longer Going Postal!


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Our Business

In 1999 • Netflix launched DVD rentals-by-mail – Unlimited rentals for a flat monthly fee

– No due dates – No late fees

– No shipping or handling fees

– First attempt to target long-tail rental market • We can ship any of >100K titles, whereas Brick-and-Mortar are constrained by how much space they can rent - Only 1-2k rentals


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Our Business

Fast Forward to 2008 •  Netflix forecasts the gradual end of the DVD and

starts switching to Movie Streaming •  Upside? –  We spend $500MM to $600MM annually on US

Postage for DVD mailing

–  Streaming a movie is a fraction of the cost of shipping a DVD

–  Easier to craft a business model for international expansion


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Our Business

•  We have 22M+ subscribers in the US and Canada

•  May account for 20% of US peak downstream bandwidth usage

•  A top CDN user in the US •  Limelight, Akamai, & Level 3 deliver images and movies

•  Grew subscribers 2008-2010 by partnering with device makers


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Our Business

•  A world of connected devices, some mobile

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Our Problem


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Our Problem

• Circa late 2008, Netflix had a single data center –  Single-point-of-failure (a.k.a. SPOF)

–  Approaching limits on cooling, power, space, traffic capacity

• Alternatives – Build more data centers – Outsource the majority of our capacity planning and scale out • Allows us to focus on core competencies


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Our Problem’s Solution!

• Winner : Outsource the majority of our capacity planning and scale out – Leverage a leading Infrastructure-as-a-service provider • Amazon Web Services

• Footnote : As it has taken us a while (i.e. ~2+ years) to realize our vision of running on the cloud, we needed an interim solution to handle growth – We did build a second data center along the way • We did outgrow it soon afterward!

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Cloud Migration Strategy

What to Migrate? How?


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• Components – Applications and Software Infrastructure

– Data

• Migration Considerations – Security • PII and PCI DSS stays in our DC, rest can go to the cloud

– Web Scale – this goes!


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Examples of Applications that can be moved • Web Scale – Personalized Video Discovery (e.g. browsing movie lists on the IPhone)

– Streaming Video Playback (e.g. watching a movie on the IPhone)

• Off-line – Video Encoding • Encode and store in final form in CDN

• ~40 encodes from a single mezzanine : bit rates, screen resolutions, codecs, etc…

•  Infrastructure – Log Capture & Analysis, Monitoring, Alerting


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Examples of Data that can be moved • Video-centric data – Critics’ and Users’ reviews

– Video Metadata (e.g. director, actors, plot description, etc…)

• User-video-centric data – some of our largest data sets – Video Queue

– Watched History

– Video Ratings (i.e. a 5-star rating system)

– Video Playback Metadata (e.g. streaming bookmarks, activity logs)

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Cloud Migration

What Does the Cloud Offer?


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“The cloud lets its users focus on delivering differentiating business value instead of wasting valuable resources on the undifferentiated heavy lifting that makes up most of IT infrastructure.”

- Werner Vogels, CTO, Amazon August 25, 2009, ‘All Things Distributed’

Cloud Migration

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AWS Services We Use Messaging Services


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Messaging Services

Data Center Amazon Web Services WebLogic Messaging SQS (Message Queues)

SNS (Message Topics)


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Messaging Services

•  Use-cases for Message Queues –  System Dependency Decoupling •  e.g. Decouple Cloud and DC applications -  When user adds a movie to the instant queue in the cloud, we send the update back to the DC for DC-resident applications -  Message consumers are decoupled from message producers

–  Fire-and-forget Write Scalability •  e.g. Application Logging -  Write to BI storage -  Consumers can process messages at their own rate


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Messaging Services

•  SQS –  Infinitely Scalable but does not guarantee in-order message delivery

–  Never worry about overflowing the queue and crashing or becoming unresponsive! •  Often a problem with enterprise messaging systems

–  Messages are automatically dropped from queues after a maximum of 4 days


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Messaging Services

•  SQS –  API for Queue Management •  CreateQueue •  ListQueues •  DeleteQueue

– API for Message Management •  SendMessage (up to 64K in size) •  ReceiveMessage (up to 10 messages in a batch) •  DeleteMessage (a.k.a. ACK Message) •  SetVisibilityTimeout – after which, a message becomes visible to other ReceivedMessage calls

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AWS Services We Use Persistence


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Persistence

Data Center Amazon Web Services

Oracle SimpleDB

S3

Cassandra


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Persistence

An ideal storage solution should have the following features: þ Hosted

þ Managed Distribution Model

þ Works in AWS þ AP from CAP

þ Handles a majority of use-cases accessing high-growth, high-traffic data þ Specifically, key access by customer id, movie id, or both


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Persistence

• We picked SimpleDB and S3 – SimpleDB was targeted as the AP equivalent of our RDBMS

databases in our Data Center

– S3 was used for data sets where item or row data exceeded SimpleDB limits and could be looked up purely by a single key (i.e. does not require secondary indices and complex query semantics) • Video encodes

• Streaming device activity logs (i.e. CLOB, BLOB, etc…)

• Compressed (old) Rental History


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Persistence

SimpleDB Hash Table Relational Databases

Domain Hash Table Table

Item Entry Row

Item Name Key Mandatory Primary Key

Attribute Part of the Entry Value

Column

Terminology


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Persistence

Soccer Players

Key Value

ab12ocs12v9 First Name = Harold Last Name = Kewell Nickname = Wizard of Oz

Teams = Leeds United, Liverpool, Galatasaray

b24h3b3403b First Name = Pavel Last Name = Nedved Nickname = Czech Cannon

Teams = Lazio, Juventus

cc89c9dc892 First Name = Cristiano Last Name = Ronaldo

Teams = Sporting, Manchester United, Real Madrid

SimpleDB’s salient characteristics

•  SimpleDB offers a range of consistency options

•  SimpleDB domains are sparse and schema-less

•  The Key and all Attributes are indexed

•  Each item must have a unique Key

•  An item contains a set of Attributes

•  Each Attribute has a name

•  Each Attribute has a set of values

•  All data is stored as UTF-8 character strings (i.e. no support for types such as numbers or dates)


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Persistence What does the API look like? • Manage Domains – CreateDomain – DeleteDomain – ListDomains – DomainMetaData

• Access Data – Retrieving Data • GetAttributes – returns a single item • Select – returns multiple items using SQL syntax

– Writing Data • PutAttributes – put single item • BatchPutAttributes – put multiple items

– Removing Data • DeleteAttributes – delete single item • BatchDeleteAttributes – delete multiple items

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AWS Services We Use Compute


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Compute

Data Center Amazon Web Services

Hadoop EMR & S3

Servers EC2 – heavy use of reserved instances

Citrix Load Balancer •  Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) •  Cloud Watch •  Auto Scale Group (ASG)

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Filling the Gaps Netflix’s Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting


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Filling the Gaps

AWS IAAS • Persistence

•  SimpleDB, RDS, S3, EBS

• Compute • EC2, EMR, ASG, ELB

• Monitoring • CloudWatch

? Netflix Applications

AWS provides various IAAS offerings, but applications need more!


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Filling the Gaps

AWS IAAS • Persistence •  SimpleDB, RDS, S3, EBS

• Load Handling • EC2, EMR, ASG, ELB

• Monitoring • CloudWatch

Netflix Platform • Platform.jar • Middle-tier Load

Balancing • Discovery • Encryption Services • Caching • Configuration • GeoLocation

Netflix Applications

AWS provides various IAAS offerings, but applications need more!

Hence the need for Netflix’s infrastructure team to bridge the gap!


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?

Discovery & MTLB

S3 SimpleDB

SQS

EC2 EC2

AWS IAAS

EC2 EC2 EC2 EC2

Netflix mid-tier services (e.g. Q or Merch services)

AWS ELB Netflix edge services (e.g. API)

Q

API

Merch


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Discovery & MTLB

S3 SimpleDB

SQS

EC2 EC2

AWS IAAS

EC2 EC2 EC2 EC2

Netflix mid-tier services (e.g. Q or Merch services) w/

platform.jar

AWS ELB

Discovery Middle Tier Load Balancer

Netflix Platform

Netflix edge services (e.g. API)

Q Merch

API

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Building Mobile Apps Apple IPhone


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Mobile App Development Strategy

• We develop mobile web pages that run in Web Kit where available. Examples include: •  PS3

•  IPhone/IPad/etc…

• Enables • A/B Testing

•  Fast Deployments

•  Leveraging code across devices (e.g. IPhone & Android)


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IPhone

• When you click on the app, you see the splash screen

• It will disappear once we start loading the Home Page


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IPhone • Home Page Loading: Fetch

1.  Time service

2.  User resource

3.  Rental History for resume feature

4.  Fetch up to 12 Lists of Movies

1.  Get 3 movies for the top-most list (e.g. Children & Family)

2.  After it loads, fetch 3 movies for remaining 11 lists in parallel – slows scrolling

5.  Bulk rating request for all titles to fetch the star bars

•  Average 11 API calls on Home Page


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IPhone • User Interaction Reasoning (in red)

•  Rental History for resume feature

•  Promotes fastest movie launch

•  Fetch up to 12 Lists of Movies

•  Get 3 movies for the top-most list (e.g. Children & Family)

•  After it loads, fetch 3 movies for remaining 11 lists in parallel

•  Remaining 11 may slow scrolling

•  Bulk rating request for all titles to fetch the star bars

•  Absence is least obvious to user

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Tips & Tricks Apple IPhone


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Tips & Tricks - Prefetching


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Tips & Tricks – Prefetching • On any list (e.g. Home) page, we prefetch

•  Box Shot Image

•  Title

•  Ratings (i.e. star bar)

•  Year, MPAA rating, Duration

•  Synopsis

• On the Movie Display Page, we load/reload

•  “In Q” button status

•  Play or Resume button status

• Cast/Director

• Episode List (for TV Shows) or Simliars (for Movies)


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Tips & Tricks – Memory Savings

• To save memory, when we navigate away from the MDP, we unload the following: • Similars (for Movies)

• Episodes (for TV Shows)

• We keep the Cast & Director

• On future visit to this MDP, we will reload the following:

• Anything not loaded

• Button status for both buttons


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Tips & Tricks – Bandwidth Savings

•  Server responses are GZIP compressed –  Processor speed ample enough to handle the decompression

–  Less power hungry than wireless 3G transfers of uncompressed data

–  Rules of thumb, keep payload 20-100KB per call


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Tips & Tricks – Bandwidth Savings

•  Revising Netflix REST Model – Too chatty

– Too many round-trips

–  Or it returns data that is not needed • A lot of processing is needed to skip extraneous data

•  Moving to a more structured query language (e.g. SQL-like)

• This will reduce memory, bandwidth use, and round-trips • Great blog entry on the topic from Netflix’s Director of API

@daniel_jacobson –  http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/02/redesigning-netflix-

api.html


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Tips & Tricks – Image Sprites

•  Image Sprites are used to reduce memory and bandwidth by giving the user the impression of viewing different images, when in fact there is only one –  Ratings Star Bars –  Footer (i.e. Home, Genres, Search, & Q)


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Tips & Tricks – Image Sprites

With Some Markup

<span title="1 of 5" class="rating r1"><img width="0" height="1" src="sprite.gif" alt=""/>1 out of 5</span>

<span title="2 of 5" class="rating r2"><img width="0" height="1" src="sprite.gif" alt=""/>2 out of 5</span>

…..

And Some CSS

.rating {

position: relative;

height: 1.6em;

…..


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Tips & Tricks – Security

•  All traffic is over secure channels – https – Deny Man-in-the-Middle attacks

•  All requests are signed with a time –  Use Netflix Time Service to avoid clock-

skew

–  Avoids replay attacks

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Netflix IPhone App Demo


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Netflix IPhone App Demo

•  Link can be found at the location below: –  http://blog.netflix.com/2010/08/netflix-now-available-on-your-iphone.html

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Questions?

Intuit CTOF 2011 - Netflix for Mobile in the Cloud

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