Hasta La Gadget!

It only took a line of strong storms to bring down the servers that power Netflix’s massive streaming operation, but the online giant says that it still fully belives in the power of cloud computing, and it has no plans to restructure anything as a result of the unexpected service failure over the weekend.

The problem that occurred last weekend was that Amazon’s Web Services division collapsed from massive thunderstorms that ravaged a huge chunk of the eastern half of the country. Netflix, along with many other online powerhouses, use Amazon’s servers to power their operations. Netflix admitted it was due to issues on Amazon’s end, but did not outright criticize the online retail giant.

Instead, Netflix merely said, “This outage highlighted the need for additional tools.” It was nevertheless “a reminder that as everyone transitions from local storage to the cloud, that it is always a good idea to keep hard-copy back-ups of everything, because you never know what might take down the cloud.”

[via GigaOM]

Netflix not deterred by outage is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you watched anything on Netflix last month, then you helped the digital streaming giant reach a new milestone – a billion hours of streamed video served to users in one month. Company CEO Reed Hastings made the announcement in a Facebook post. It’s unclear how far over the billion-hour mark the site went last month, but it probably just barely crossed the finish line.

Still, there’s no discounting the magnitude of that kind of achievement. This means that the average Netflix user consumed an impressive 1.5 hours of content from their streaming account every day in the month of June. This comes after Netflix announced earlier this year that it streamed 2 billion hours of instant video in Q4 2011.

But that was over a three-month period. Hastings also posted high hopes for the site’s future, writing in a public note to chief content officer Ted Sarandos, “When ‘House of Cards’ and ‘Arrested Development’ debut, we’ll blow these records away. Keep going, Ted, we need even more!”

[via LA Times]

Netflix streamed a billion hours of content in June is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As evidence of the fact that high-end technological platforms are still vulnerable to the same trials and tribulations as everyone else, a series of severe storms rattled service at a few of the biggest online services this weekend. Netflix, Instagram, and Pinterest were among the most notable companies to suffer outages as a result of the weather.

All three of those companies, and hundreds more, rely on Web fidelity and storage from Amazon. It’s one of the less publicized offerings from the online retail giant, but that doesn’t make it less important. It helps to power some of the top websites on the Internet. The retailer confirmed to the Associated Press that there was damage to its operations as a result of the severe storms on Saturday.

By late afternoon, though, the problems were fixed and service was restored to affected clients and customers. It does help to remind users not to take their online services for granted. It also is a reminder that as everyone transitions from local storage to the cloud, that it is always a good idea to keep hard-copy back-ups of everything, because you never know what might take down the cloud.

[via USA Today]

Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest suffer storm-related outages is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

What to do on this Friday night? If your answer to that age old question was “Netflix,” then you likely received a bit of a rude shock this evening upon discovery that the company’s video streaming service is currently out-of-whack. If you’re wondering why that is, it appears to be tied to some of Amazon’s EC2 servers in Virgina losing power due to the bad weather there. As VentureBeat notes, it’s a problem which is also affecting sites like Instagram and Pinterest at the moment. For its part, Netflix has acknowledged the issue via its Twitter account, to which it states, “We’re aware that some members are experiencing issues streaming movies and TV shows. We’re working to resolve the problem.” So, there you have it. Now the only question that remains is whether you’ll break out one of those red envelopes, fire up Hulu Plus or venture out to the theater to satiate your movie desires.

Update: @Netflix just tweeted that everyone should be back up, or will be shortly. The Amazon AWS dashboard indicates it’s recovering as of 3:13AM, so all should be ready for your tilt-shifted Saturday brunch pics and subsequent dream board updates.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one: Netflix is currently down, admins hard at work (Update: back up) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jun 2012 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to Reuters, the government-operated China Movie Channel will soon launch an online video service similar to Netflix in the mainland sometime this year. The move will reportedly bring huge streams of revenue to Hollywood since the yet-to-be-named service will stream films and TV shows from the motion-picture industry for the majority of subscribers in China. Investors allegedly told Reuters that China’s new video service has already signed a content agreement with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures. (more…)

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