When will Netflix move to another cloud besides AWS?

I don’t own any Netflix stock, but if I did I would ask “Do you really think hosting Netflix in  streaming media competitor Amazon.com’s data centers is the best decision?  What other cloud providers have you evaluated besides AWS?”

Being in the cloud makes sense, but couldn’t Netflix be in a facility like SoftLayer or Rackspace?

With Netflix’s outage in AWS, should these questions get asked?

Netflix Confirms Outage; Showtime Shows to Be Pulled

By Mark Hachman

Netflix (for iPad)

Netflix reported problems with its Web site and streaming service on Tuesday night, which the company has yet to explain.

While the Web site was functional at 8 PM PT, newer interfaces such as those used by the Logitech Revue were unable to connect. Other users reported that Netflix streaming was still down via the Roku box and the PlayStation 3.

"We are aware that the website may not work for everyone at this time. We're working to get it fixed as quickly as we can," the NetflixHelps account tweeted about 4 PM Pacific time.

Netflix proudly discuss the 5 reasons why they went to AWS.  I wonder what Netflix thinks about their #3 point.

3. The best way to avoid failure is to fail constantly.

We’ve sometimes referred to the Netflix software architecture in AWS as our Rambo Architecture. Each system has to be able to succeed, no matter what, even all on its own. We’re designing each distributed system to expect and tolerate failure from other systems on which it depends.

If our recommendations system is down, we degrade the quality of our responses to our customers, but we still respond. We’ll show popular titles instead of personalized picks. If our search system is intolerably slow, streaming should still work perfectly fine.

One of the first systems our engineers built in AWS is called the Chaos Monkey. The Chaos Monkey’s job is to randomly kill instances and services within our architecture. If we aren’t constantly testing our ability to succeed despite failure, then it isn’t likely to work when it matters most – in the event of an unexpected outage.

Twitter makes major investment in IT infrastructure, hires eBay VP of Technical Ops Mazen Rawashdeh

Twitter’s VP of Engineering of Mike Abbott has tweeted the hiring of Mazen Rawashdeh from eBay as VP of Technical Operations.  TechCrunch covers the announcement.

eBay VP Of Ops Mazen Rawashdeh Moves To Twitter As VP Of Ops

17 hours ago

Twitter has confirmed that seven year eBay veteran Mazen Rawashdeh will be replacing Nick Heyman as VP of Operations at the 400 person strong company. In true Twitter fashion, the move was announced in a tweet by Twitter VP of Engineering Michael Abbott.

There are a couple of comments in this article.

All Things Digital also posts.

Twitter recently completed two data center migrations, with Abbott saying yesterday that the company could now look beyond its stability problems.

The company had let go of its previous Manager of Operations, Nick Heyman, in December. Heyman was a veteran of Facebook, Playdom and Zazzle.

For those of you who don’t know Mazen here is information you can read to find out what he has done at eBay.

Mazen gave a keynote presentation in Dec 2010 at Gartner’s Data Center Conference where he discussed eBay’s accomplishments.

Mazen Rawashdeh

Vice president of Technology Operations
eBay Marketplaces

Mazen is a technology executive with both Fortune 500 and internet startup experience. Mazen has been with eBay for 6.5 years and is responsible for eBay Marketplaces technology Operations. In his role,Mazen is responsible for the day to day operations of the eBay Marketplaces technology platform in addition to technology operations strategy, data centers, servers, databases, storage, data warehousing, and global network technologies.

In the past few years, Mr. Rawashdeh has led multiple technology initiatives at eBay which provided a significant reduction in data center power, footprint and up-lift in the eBay site capacity while driving the TCO "Total cost of ownership" down.

I was at Gartner’s Data Center conference and posted a blog entry with a video of Mazen.

eBay VP of IT Operations, Mazen Rawashdeh keynote at Gartner DC LV

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2010 AT 2:51AM

I ran into Mazen before he presented his keynote at Gartner DC LV, and we caught up as we hadn’t chatted for a while.  I sat up front and created a video of Mazen discussing the process change that eBay made to improve the performance per watt for eBay systems.  Sitting with the eBay team we were also able to catch up a bit discussing Olivier Sanche passing away.

Mazen does a good job of explaining what eBay did to change the behaviors in IT to be greener in the data center and reduce watts per transaction by 70%.

Enter video caption here

image

Here is an interview with Mazen by TriplePundit regarding eBay’s Green Data Center.

eBay Builds State-of-the-art Green Data Center in Utah
By Kathryn Siranosian | November 13th, 2009 5 Comments

green-data-centers-bannerWelcome to UtahOnline auction site eBay is building a $334 million state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible data center in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah.

eBay says this data center will showcase the best and most innovative thinking in green data center design, technology, construction and operation, and Triple Pundit asked Mazen Rawashdeh, VP Technology Operations, eBay Inc., to fill us in on all the details.

Triple Pundit: Does this new data center represent new capacity, or will it consolidate other eBay data centers?

Mazen Rawashdeh: The new center is being opened as part of a corporate-level, four-year  data center consolidation strategy that is moving us from a handful of co-located data center facilities – largely space that we rent from data center providers – to space that we own and can manage to the highest standards in both cost and environmental efficiency. In short, it’s a consolidation strategy. Our business model is unique; we know the rhythms and availability requirements that are specific to eBay’s platform. By designing an environment for our data and compute power – both in terms of physical data center, hardware and software infrastructure that goes into it – we can innovate and manage it in the most efficient way possible. The facility in Utah will host the core technology that runs our business – including the eBay.com marketplace, PayPal and some of our adjacencies, including StubHub.com and Shopping.com.

Next step in stopping a Content Farm from stealing content, contacting web hoster

I posted about BestGreenWebHostingDeal stealing my content.   I have tried to contact the owner of the site, but no response.

Next step I contacted the web hosting company and they asked for the following information.  As part of what they ask for below I plan on using this post as example of how BestGreenWebHostingDeal copies my content as it will be only a matter of minutes before their content bot scrapes my site and posts this up.  And here is the copy of my site http://www.bestgreenwebhostingdeal.com/2070/next-step-in-stopping-a-content-farm-from-stealing-content-contacting-web-hoster/ 

Hello Dave

Thank you for contacting Lunarpages regarding your recent copyright concerns. Please be advised that Lunarpages takes copyright issues very seriously and has implemented policies and procedures specifically to deal with claims such as yours pursuant to applicable law so as to protect the rights of all parties involved.

In addition to the steps set forth below we strongly encourage you to contact the web site owner directly as that may be a more direct route to the solution of your problem and the satisfaction of your concerns.

In order for Lunarpages to act upon the allegedly infringing material we require the following information:

1. A physical or electronic signature of the owner of the copyrighted work or an authorized agent of that owner.

2. identification of the copyrighted work alleged to have been infringed.

3. identification of the allegedly infringing material sufficiently precise to allow Lunarpages to locate the material.

4. Adequate information by which we can contact the complaining party specifically including a physical postal address, telephone number and email address.

5. a proper statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, the copyright owners agent or the law.

6. a statement under penalty of perjury that the information in the notice is true and correct. and

7. a statement under penalty of perjury that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.

In particular items that would be helpful to us would include proof of your federally filed Copyright as to the particular images if they have indeed been Federally registered, Information as to the identity of the owner of the copyright and a description of how those rights came into being, and information as to whether there are any other individuals or entities with copyright ownership of the material.

Once we receive a notice which is in compliance with the above notice provisions we can consider taking further action which might include but would not be limited to notification to our customer, warning our customer or disabling of the web site as Lunarpages determines might be reasonable and necessary under the circumstances.As mentioned above, Lunarpages is a strong supporter of Copyright and Trademark rights on the Internet. We believe that we have adopted a fair, comprehensive policy toward the protection of those rights and we look forward to assisting you in any way possible in this regard to ensure a fair, appropriate and expeditious response toward the protection of those rights.

Of course if you should have any further questions, comments or concerns regarding this matter please do not hesitate to let us know.

Regards,Jay Armitageabuse@lunarpages.com Lunarpages Webhosting 1360 N. Hancock St.Anaheim, CA 92807

Here is part of the contact information for BestGreenWebHosting.

Registrant:
   Tannia Schrieber
   166 Springfield Ave
   Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004
   United States

   Registered through: All You Can Eat Domains.com
   Domain Name: BESTGREENWEBHOSTINGDEAL.COM
      Created on: 28-Jun-10
      Expires on: 28-Jun-11
      Last Updated on: 28-Jun-10

   Administrative Contact:
      Schrieber, Tannia  tannia.schrieber@gmail.com
      166 Springfield Ave
      Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004
      United States
      (267) 249-6306      Fax -- 

   Technical Contact:
      Schrieber, Tannia  tannia.schrieber@gmail.com
      166 Springfield Ave
      Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004
      United States
      (267) 249-6306      Fax -- 

   Domain servers in listed order:
      NS1.LUNARIFFIC.COM
      NS2.LUNARIFFIC.COM

Data Center Site Locations are cheap, so easy to pick another one, example Verizon cancels Buffalo project

Data Center Site selection is not open and transparent.  It is purposely obscure how decisions are made and the criteria used to make decisions.  What few understand is given how cheap the land is for a location vs. the data center construction cost, IT equipment, and OPEX a site is rarely so valuable that a company doesn't have alternative sites they can choose from.

Rich Miller at DataCenterKnowledge asks a good question whether Verizon's acquisition of Terremark or local lawsuits in Buffalo cancelled the Verizon project in Buffalo.

Did Terremark Deal Scuttle New Verizon Projects?

March 21st, 2011 : Rich Miller

The NAP of the Capital Region in Culpeper, Virginia is among the data center assets Verizon expects to acquire once it closes its acquisition of Terremark.

There’s plenty of finger-pointing going on among local officials in the Buffalo area following Thursday’s announcement that Verizon will not proceed with plans to build a proposed 900,000 square foot data center project in Somerset, N.Y. Some blamed delays in land acquisition, but there was also anger about the role played by a lawsuitfrom local resident Mary Ann Rizzo, who felt a proper environmental review was not conducted for the project.

What is going on is the smart companies are picking sites with options to build with good cancellation terms.  Why lock yourself into a site when the land cost is 2% or less of the construction cost and less than 1% of the overall TCO.

There are also many data center projects that have been put on hold by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, and many others.

The one person who is happy is Mary Ann Rizzo who filed the lawsuit, but she also made many enemies now that the Verizon project is cancelled.

Senator blames woman for Verizon departure

Updated: Friday, 18 Mar 2011, 7:36 AM EDT
Published : Thursday, 17 Mar 2011, 10:16 PM EDT

SOMERSET, N.Y. (WIVB) - Verizon has hung up on a multi-billion dollar data center in Somerset. State Senator George Maziarz blames a legal challenge from a nearby landowner.

Art Giacalone is cautiously celebrating a victory.

"It's hard to breathe a huge sigh of relief because I frankly have not trusted much of what they've said for months now," said Giacalone.

Many blame his client, Mary Ann Rizzo, for Verizon pulling the plug on plans to build a $4 billion data center on farmland in the town of Somerset. Rizzo owns 116 acres across the road from the land Verizon was eyeing.

Senator George Maziarz said, "It just shows you how one person who owns property across the street, doesn't even live on the property, but just owns property across the street has killed this up to $5 billion project."

Green The Data Center Network with OpenFlow, ElastricTree Demonstration using Google data

OpenFlow is going to change data centers as it redefines the network.  Look at the company Nicira that was started by the professors who defined OpenFlow.

image

One of the demonstrations of OpenFlow is ElasticTree which can be used for lower energy use in the data center.

image

The ElasticTree paper is here.

image

The authors had access to data from Google.

image

It looks like this team had access to Google data centers back in 2008.

Traffic in a Realistic Data Center
In order to evaluate energy savings with a real
data center workload, we collected system and network
traces from a production data center hosting an
e-commerce application (Trace 1, §1). The servers
in the data center are organized in a tiered model as
application servers, file servers and database servers.
The System Activity Reporter (sar) toolkit available
on Linux obtains CPU, memory and network statistics,
including the number of bytes transmitted and
received from 292 servers. Our traces contain statistics
averaged over a 10-minute interval and span 5
days in April 2008.