Making older time-series data cheaper without changing the query interface
Netflix’s TimeSeries platform separates frequently accessed recent events from older data, moving the latter to object storage while keeping a consistent query interface. Its first approach streams events into a cold tier and reorganizes them for efficient reads. The source also introduces a Cassandra-native approach that uses backups already in object storage.
As datasets grow and users ask to retain events for longer, keeping everything on fast storage becomes expensive. Historical data is queried less often, but it still needs to be available for audits, investigations, and internal analysis—sometimes with sub-second latency. Netflix’s design shows how a storage tier can trade some operational complexity for lower costs without asking users to learn a separate query interface.