Around the world, Netflix uses 18,000 servers, spread over 175 countries, to allow its hundreds of millions of subscribers to access their films, documentaries and series from anywhere and with identical quality. A user has recovered a server, and he revealed the secrets.
What does a Netflix server look like? The most “geeks”, but also the competition, would undoubtedly like to know it since the online video platform has some 200 million subscribers! Well, a netizen posted on Reddit photos of a recovered server, and he revealed the secrets. Secrets, it seems, compromising since he then erased the contents…
What we learned is that this server was with an American access provider and that it was part of the CDN network (content delivery network) from Netflix. Roughly speaking, it is the equivalent of a “mirror” or cache server, and it allows subscribers to have a permanent image quality, without interruption. According to a Netflix executive, interviewed by Motherboard it exists ” 18,000 servers containing [le] catalog in 6,000 locations in 175 countriessaid Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief operating officer. So when consumers press play, the movie or show streams from around the corner, reducing traffic and costs for operators around the world. ».
More than 20,000 movies stored on a server
Regularly, these servers are updated and replaced, as in any ” date center », and this red box has no external mention. The Internet user therefore opened it, and inside, he discovered a classic motherboard, with a single processor. Xeon E5 2650L v2, 64 GB of RAM and a 10 gigabit Ethernet card. Nothing really flamboyant since the primary mission of this server is simply to be a data reader.
But the most interesting is the storage part with 36 7.2 TB 7200 rpm drives and six 500 GB Micron SSD drives. Which gives a total of 262 TB of storage. Knowing that you can store around 80 films in HD on a 1 TB disk, Netflix can therefore store more than 20,000 films or episodes of series on this mini server.
