JioHotstar scaled to 59 million concurrent streams on EKS
JioHotstar details the technical challenges and solutions implemented to scale its infrastructure to support 59 million concurrent streams during the ODI World Cup 2023, following the introduction of a 'Free on Mobile' offering. The solutions involved optimizing CDN usage by segregating cacheable and non-cacheable APIs, managing NAT Gateway and Kubernetes worker node scaling, and fine-tuning Kubernetes CNI settings for IP address allocation. This first part of a series focuses on infrastructure adjustments to handle unprecedented user concurrency.
Key Takeaways
- Peak concurrency reached 59 million concurrent streams during the ODI World Cup 2023, versus about 25 million before the tournament.
- JioHotstar created a new CDN domain for cacheable API paths such as scorecard, concurrency, key moments, and live feeds.
- Subnet-level NAT Gateways replaced the usual AZ-level setup after one Kubernetes cluster hit 50% of network throughput at just 1/10th of peak traffic.
- High-throughput Kubernetes worker nodes of at least 10 Gbps and topology spread constraints kept internal API Gateway pods to one per node.
- Amazon EKS benchmarking exposed API server errors above 400 nodes, so scaling was throttled to 100–300 nodes per step and VPC CNI settings were reduced from MINIMUM_IP_TARGET 35 to 20 and WARM_IP_TARGET 10 to 5.
Why It Matters
JioHotstar’s account shows how live-sports streaming at 59 million concurrent sessions depends on constant tuning across CDN, NAT Gateway, and Kubernetes layers, not just raw server count. The company’s move to isolate cacheable APIs, spread NAT Gateways to the subnet level, and migrate to Amazon EKS highlights how infrastructure decisions now shape viewer experience during major cricket events. The clearest signal to watch next is its follow-up series, which will detail the 10+ EKS clusters and 200+ service migration behind this scale.
Read full article at blog.hotstar.com