I wonder how all that works out for Netflix. They must get a massive discount but do they buy reserved instances? or are all of their instances reserved instances?

According to @jedberg... they don't get any discounts other than hitting those top level tiers which are discounted. They pay the same rates as us peasants for the lower levels.

And yes, I'd imagine they heavily use reserved instances as their traffic patterns would be pretty predictable by now.

I know people using a tiny little fraction of that which have negotiated discounts well beyond the published prices at usage well below the top tiers.

If they do pay the public prices, they are being totally fleeced to the point where you'd have to ask what in the world they are doing.

Thats what I would have thought too... just going off of what he has said in previous comments directly to me.

I guess he could be technically right in that they might overall be so far into the "Contact Us" tier that they've just been given a steep enough discount for that part of their usage to nullify the premium on the lower tiers. Having Netflix people say they're paying the regular rates certainly is good for Amazon PR.

They've given talks about how they do their own internal billing scheme to manage their blend of on-demand vs RIs vs spot. It comes down to watching your usage patterns, doing some smart modeling on growth, and buying RIs for the amount you'll utilize to the point that it makes sense over on-demand.

RIs make such a big difference on your bill if you utilize them well, and it's a no-brainer for Netflix scale.