Saturday, December 14, 2024

How Netflix works: Redditor buys cache servers with 262 terabytes of storage

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Perhaps the most important characteristics of a streaming service are, on the one hand, a good offer of content and, on the other hand, that everything is delivered smoothly and without problems to the home cinema or mobile device. A Reddit user now provides a rare insight into how.

Netflix it is used by millions of people every day and every night and every customer expects movies and series to be played immediately and smoothly. Therefore, the technology “behind” the screen is of crucial importance. A Reddit user named PoisonWeapon3 (via Ars Technica).

Because you write that you were able to buy a discarded Netflix cache server. The Redditor writes that he works for a major Internet Service Provider (ISP) and “we are currently replacing some 2013-era Netflix OCA caches and they offered me one. Of course I couldn’t say no.”

For Netflix to work smoothly

OCA stands for “Open Connection Device”. Open Connect is a network of servers hosted by local ISPs that contain copies of Netflix video content. The streaming service thus brings its content closer to the respective subscribers in the true sense of the word. “I knew that Netflix had removed them during the decommissioning, that they were running FreeBSD, that they were packed with drives, and that was it,” the Redditor writes. PoisonWaffe3 also picked up a screwdriver and found a “pretty standard” SuperMicro motherboard, an Intel Xeon CPU (E5 2650L v2), 64GB DDR3 RAM, 36 Western Digital 7.2TB (7200rpm) hard drives, six Micron SSDs 500 GB, two 750 W. PSUs, and a quad-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC. Overall, the cache server generated 262 terabytes of memory, that’s a lot even for the year 2022.

Originally, the taxpayer wanted to know what to do with the thing. This decision may not have been made yet, but the operating system has already been decided upon: TrueNAS, an open source operating system that was developed specifically for network file storage applications.

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Ebenezer Robbins
Ebenezer Robbins
Introvert. Beer guru. Communicator. Travel fanatic. Web advocate. Certified alcohol geek. Tv buff. Subtly charming internet aficionado.

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