Oh, they absolutely justify it on the basis that if a CDN node is unstable they'll just fail traffic across to another node. And as a FreeBSD developer I have to say that it's great having the OS (or at least the parts Netflix uses) stress tested -- you can't reproduce "1/3 of all internet traffic" in a test lab.
The reason I think they're nuts isn't stability but rather security. I guess since they're shipping these boxes around the world there's nothing really sensitive on them; but still, if I were in their shoes I would be worried about security bugs being introduced.
> The reason I think they're nuts isn't stability but rather security. I guess since they're shipping these boxes around the world there's nothing really sensitive on them; but still, if I were in their shoes I would be worried about security bugs being introduced.
Perhaps they have some really awesome IDS, and honeypots, and good security boundaries between components, etc. A company like that surely has a good plan in place.
The reason I think they're nuts isn't stability but rather security. I guess since they're shipping these boxes around the world there's nothing really sensitive on them; but still, if I were in their shoes I would be worried about security bugs being introduced.