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Cloud Network Open Source News

Netflix Open-Sources "Janitor Monkey" AWS Cleanup Tool 34

Nerval's Lobster writes "Netflix has released 'Janitor Monkey,' an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances, that began life as an in-house product. While those hosting a private data center will have little use for this scrubbin' simian, those enterprises with a public cloud can add Janitor Monkey to their administrative bag of tricks. The premise behind the tool is a simple one: while AWS allows for easy (and cheap) experimentation, it's easy for even the most diligent IT pro to rack up unnecessary costs when they forget to shut off a particular instance. While Netflix's Asgard tool—open-sourced in June, because this is how the company rolls—allows administrators to delete unused resources, Janitor Monkey takes things one step further by allowing those instances to be automatically found so that Asgard can clean them up. Over the past year, Janitor Monkey has deleted more than 5,000 resources running in the Netflix production and test environments, the company said. Janitor Monkey detects AWS instances, EBS volumes, EBS volume snapshots, and auto-scaling group."
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Netflix Open-Sources "Janitor Monkey" AWS Cleanup Tool

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  • an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances that began life as an in-house product

    This is awesome! My other problem is that I've got a number of AWS instances that did not begin life as in-house products. Will NetFlix release a tool to kill those off as well? Ba-dum-ching! I'll be here all week, folks :)

    • an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances that began life as an in-house product

      This is awesome! My other problem is that I've got a number of AWS instances that did not begin life as in-house products. Will NetFlix release a tool to kill those off as well? Ba-dum-ching! I'll be here all week, folks :)

      It's open source, so fork it.

      • an open-source tool for killing old Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances that began life as an in-house product

        This is awesome! My other problem is that I've got a number of AWS instances that did not begin life as in-house products. Will NetFlix release a tool to kill those off as well?

        Ba-dum-ching! I'll be here all week, folks :)

        It's open source, so fork it.

        *whoooosh*!

        :)

  • I'm pretty sure they wanted this name for their new GC implementation for the Firefox JavaScript VM.
  • This was needed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandytaru ( 1158959 ) on Monday January 07, 2013 @12:46PM (#42506877) Journal
    I had an AWS instance that just wouldn't die. Turns out it had some EBS function on the image that caused the instance to zombie itself and come back from the dead every time I killed it - wouldn't shut off permanently til the EBS thing was killed first. Very annoying.

    If Janitor Monkey can do this automatically, it'll save some admins a lot of headaches - and money.
  • by CrashandDie ( 1114135 ) on Monday January 07, 2013 @12:53PM (#42506983)

    For those of you wondering, the code is open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license.

    You'd think that kind of information would be in the summary, or at the very least the article, but no, you actually have to go and find the repository to find what license it's released under.

  • by HardYakka ( 265884 ) on Monday January 07, 2013 @01:08PM (#42507187)

    Isn't it odd that Netflix runs their streaming service on Amazon's infrastructure, given that they are a streaming video customer competitor?

    • by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Monday January 07, 2013 @01:12PM (#42507241) Homepage

      No different than Apple at one time (and maybe still) running iCloud on Microsoft's Azure cloud service in addition to Amazon's.

      • I'm rather surprised that Netflix isn't using the Azure cloud instead, considering their relationship with MS.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07, 2013 @01:18PM (#42507319)

      Just went to an Amazon conference where they talked about just that thing. Netflix CEO and Jeff Bezos talked about it on stage. Basically, neither of them are threatened by the other, and are happy to play nice. Netflix's business benefits AWS, and obviously vice versa. Just a bunch of nerds, getting along.

      • Just a bunch of nerds, getting along.

        No, this is Netflix realizing that they are essentially owned by Amazon at this point, and putting on their best facade. And this is Amazon realizing the same thing, and putting on the shit eating grin of an imminent conqueror. Once Amazon's streaming customer base becomes competitive with Netflix's, the former will crush the latter. This is how "cloud" computing is supposed to work, from the viewpoint of the "cloud" owner -- we control your vital asset (delivery), and can take it away at anytime of our

  • "Janitor Orangutan will not wear diapers."
  • How about releasing a Linux client, then you can tell us how cool you are, how you "roll".
  • by whois ( 27479 ) on Monday January 07, 2013 @02:18PM (#42508153) Homepage

    Thanks for releasing something to the world that someone else might have a use for. Why does your service, which completely defines your company, and uses Linux heavily in it's backend, consider Linux users to be pirates and not allow them to use your product?

    I "roll" with other services, like youtube, or hulu, or amazon which allow users to stream to Linux platforms.

    • Probably because they'd be ripped to pieces by certain Linux zealots if they released a product that support only a few distros because of support reasons? Or because they release a client that isn't opensource? (Which they probably have a hard time doing because of Pesky Patents and Evil NDAs.)

      I personally hate DRM, but I kinda doubt the whole big media mafia will wake up and smell the coffee anytime soon, so what are we going to do in the meantime? Say "screw you, if you treat me like a pirate I'll act li

  • While those hosting a private data center will have little use for this scrubbin' simian

    I don't see why this isn't useful to anyone running dynamic virts; whether on private or public infrastructure. I assume the code as released depends on the Amazon API, but as long as similar functions exist in your private cloud API, it should be possible to adapt the software.

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