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> I have tried reading this twice but can't find how are they leveraging the internal spot markets? Are they re-selling unused capacity to a third party? They
by nickcw 9y ago
> I have tried reading this twice but can't find how are they leveraging the internal spot markets? Are they re-selling unused capacity to a third party?
They have reserved a lot of instances in EC2.
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved-instances/
You can get a steep discount for reserving instances. A reserved instance is typically reserved for a number of years.
When these aren't in use, then they can put them into their video encoding pool and they are essentially free.
I guess they reserve lots of instances to make sure they have the capacity at peak times and to access some serious discounts.
- hinkley 9y agoThe one universal truth in corporate America is that if your boss’s boss spent a million dollars on somehing, they’re going to make you ‘use’ it if it’s the last thing they do. Because they worry it will be if they fail. See also multi year contracts for software that’s terrible.
- pc86 9y agoNetflix needs n instances to operate at peak capacity. The article is about them utilizing those pre-paid, necessary compute resources when the actual streaming they do requires a small fraction of n. I'm not sure how that has any correlation to multi year software contracts.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fragmede 9y agoReserved instances are a 1 or 3 year commitment for the discount, compared to more expensive on-demand instances with no minimum contract.
- mgummelt 9y agoYes, but bursting -/-> spot market.