Application caching at Netflix: The hidden microservice

Netflix is well known for championing the microservice model, but within the complex layers of dependencies is a hidden service: the caching layer. Scott Mansfield explains how the EVCache service fits into the Netflix experience and how it works in the dynamic cloud environment to provide fast and scalable application data caching.

Netflix is well known for championing the microservice model, but within the complex layers of dependencies is a hidden service: the caching layer. Caches play a role in every interaction throughout a typical customer experience, from sitting down on the couch through playing a movie, providing a high-volume, low-latency, globally available data layer that backs Netflix’s stateless services. The use cases range from session storage to video history to subscriber status, all of which benefit from the stability and fault tolerance of EVCache, the primary caching system in use at Netflix. Scott Mansfield explains how the EVCache service fits into the Netflix experience and how it works in the dynamic cloud environment to provide fast and scalable application data caching. After touring the use cases of caches at Netflix, Scott offers a peek under the hood of EVCache and its open source components—the EVCache client library, Rend, Memcached, and the not-yet-open source Mnemonic—and explores the sister projects that make up the rest of the EVCache ecosystem within Netflix, including global replication and deployment tooling.