Python at Netflix

Netflix uses Python extensively for data analysis, back end services, recommendation algorithms, content distribution, security automation, machine learning infrastructure, and animation and visual effects. Python allows Netflix engineers flexibility and access to many third-party libraries to solve a wide variety of problems.

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Python at Netflix

Uploaded by

abhishek.df3

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🎥 Lights, Camera, Python!

🐍✨
Unleashing the Power of Python: Behind
the Scenes at Netflix! 🎬🔍

Coffee-Python-Popcorn-Netflix! (how Netflix is using

Python)
The next time you’re streaming on Netflix, while you are thinking what to
watch next please do take a minute to thank popular programming language
Python and the developers who use it for much of the experience.

Netflix – This internet entertainment giant is a huge proponent of Python,

using the language primarily for data analysis and back end services. It allows
their software engineers to choose what language to code in, and have noticed
a large upsurge in the number of Python applications.

Quoting the Python developers at Netflix, “the language is used through the
“full content lifecycle”, from security tools to its recommendation algorithms,
and its proprietary content distribution network (CDN) Open Connect”
Python at Netflix.
How Python is helping Netflix to
grow
Open Connect Network
Actually, it is imprecise but still, thinking about Netflix infrastructure, it is
everything that happens before you press Play on your remote control!

What plan do you have? what have you watched so we can recommend new
titles to you? or what do you want to watch? takes place in Amazon Web
Services (AWS), whereas everything that happens afterward i.e., video
streaming takes place in the Open Connect network.

The network devices that are fundamental for a large portion of the CDN are
managed by Python applications. Applications track the inventory of network
gear: what devices, of which models, with which hardware components,
located in which sites.

“We are proud to say that our team’s tools are built primarily in Python,” the
team writes.

Demand Engineering
Netflix’s demand engineering team brings flexibility into the network by
introducing regional content and balancing the distribution of Netflix’s traffic.

Certain types of tools give Netflix a strong front stand are — Numpy and Scipy
for numerical analysis, Boto3 for AWS infrastructure, rq for running
asynchronous workloads, Flask APIs are used as a wrapper around the
synchronization tools above.
Netflix uses Python to build custom extensions to the Jupyter server that
allows engineers to manage tasks like logging, archiving, publishing and
cloning notebooks.

Core
Meanwhile, the big data synchronization team provides services and tools for
scheduling. There are usually thousands of signals after an alert which wait for
their analysis. To aid this Netflix’s CORE team uses many Python statistical
and mathematical libraries that again include Numpy, Scipy, ruptures, and
Pandas. On top of that, Python is also typically used for automation tasks, data
exploration and cleaning, and visualization.

Learn about Python Libraries in detail in just 7 mins

Insight Engineering
This was all about the main “Demand engineering”. Except this, there is an
Insight Engineering team. It is responsible for building and operating the tools
for operational insight, alerting diagnostics, and auto-remediation. As the
demand for Python is increasing at this pace, the team supports Python clients
for most of their services. The Python frameworks Gunicorn, Flask,
Flask-RESTPlus were also used to create Netflix’s Winston and Bolt diagnostic
and therapeutic platforms.
Information Security
To name a few high leverage goals for Netflix: security automation, risk
classification, auto-remediation, and vulnerability identification — all
accomplished using Python. One of the most active open-source projects-
security monkey. It is used for monitoring AWS, Google Cloud Platform,
OpenStack, and GitHub for applying changes to assets. Repokid allows the use
of Python for helping with IAM (Identity and Access Management) permission
tuning. Whereas Lemur is used to help generate TLS certificates. Netflix also
uses the Diffy forensics triage tool, which is built entirely using Python.

Machine Learning Infrastructure

All the machine learning training models from recommendation algorithms to
artwork personalization to marketing algorithms, Netflix relies extensively on
all of these in Python. Many applications are powered by Metaflow, a Python
framework that makes it easy to execute ML projects from the first model to
the final product. CPU cores, millions of computational tasks and handling
hundreds of millions of data points in memory, Netflix depends on Python
code for fetching it.

Learn everything about Machine Learning at a single place – Free 100+

Machine Learning tutorials

Notebooks
Many of the components of the balancing service are written in Python.
Starting with scheduler, which uses Jupyter Notebooks with papermill to
provide molded job types like Spark. This allows users to have an easy way to
express work that needs to be executed.

Internally, there are event-driven platforms that are fully written in Python. It
helps in defining conditions to filter events, and actions to react or route them.
As a result of this, microservices are segregated and visibility is provided into
everything that happens on the data platform.

Partner Ecosystem
The Partner Ecosystem group is expanding its use of Python for testing Netflix
applications on devices. Python is the core of a new CI infrastructure,
including balancing servers, controlling Spinnaker, test case querying and
filtering, and scheduling tests run on devices and containers. The additional
post-run analysis is being done in Python using TensorFlow to determine
which tests are most likely to show problems on which devices.

Netflix Animation and NVFX

Python is the industry standard for all of the major applications used to create
Animated and VFX content. All of the integrations with Maya and Nuke are in
Python, and the bulk of Shotgun tools are also in Python. Netflix is also getting
hands-on tooling in the cloud, and anticipate deploying many of their custom
Python AMIs.
The reason that the services are written in Python is due to the extremely
active development community, and the rich variety of third-party libraries
available to solve nearly any given problem.

Not only Netflix but many major companies are also using Python. What are
you waiting for? When will you start using it? Start learning Python by
Yourself NOW!!

Conclusion
Netflix, being a $12 billion earmarked entertainment company with over 148
million paid memberships in over 190 countries which enjoy TV series,
documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and
languages. So you can watch as much as you want, anytime, anywhere, on any
Internet-connected screen. You can play, pause and resume watching, all
without any commercial or any commitment!