Attendees walk through the exhibit floor at a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services at The Venetian in Las Vegas on November 28, 2023. AWS is responsible for the infrastructure that powers websites on the Internet.
Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services
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Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services
A massive outage at Amazon Web Services on Monday disrupted major websites and applications, showing how one companyRussia's online infrastructure has become necessary for the functioning of many modern enterprises.
Amazon said they were fixing the problem, but as of Monday evening some outages were still ongoing.
Tech experts told NPR that the incident highlights how vulnerable companies are to these types of failures.
Here's what you need to know about what happened and why a single outage can be so devastating.
The outage began early Monday morning.
Amazon reported “increased error rates and delays” starting around 3 a.m. ET affected a Northern Virginia facility.
Users have reported problems with popular websites and apps, including Duolingo and online games. Roblox and Fortnite. Financial services companies such as Coinbase, Robinhood and Venmo also reported outages, as did the companies running chatbots Perplexity and ChatGPT. Amazon said its main site was affected. United Airlines, Canva, Reddit and Flickr have also acknowledged problems on their sites. Associated Press, NPR and New York TimesGames also stated that they have problems.
Amazon said late Monday that it was making “progress” to restore full functionality.
How Amazon Cloud Computing Powers Most of the Internet
Amazon's cloud computing service, AWS, is like the invisible scaffolding that powers much of the Internet.
AWS allows companies to store and manage data online through its DynamoDB database service, which was affected by the outage.
“In other words, they rent out their cloud computing resources to others so they can serve their customers,” says Chang Lu. Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, specializing in cloud computing.
However, this morning's DynamoDB software update contained an errorwhich shut down service in Northern Virginia. A bug in this update caused a chain reaction of crashes and service disruptions.
Amazon says it has invested more than $50 billion in data centers in the state where the largest cluster is located. data centers in the USA.
Amazon's Importance in Cloud Computing Has Divided Customers
According to the research group SynergyAWS accounts for about 30% of the global cloud computing market. Other major players include Microsoft and Google.
Betsy Cooper, a cybersecurity expert and director of the Aspen Institute's Policy Academy, says there are pros and cons to companies using Amazon or another major cloud computing provider. They offer strong cybersecurity protection and convenience.
“We all have an incentive to use big companies because they are so ubiquitous and it's easier for us to access all our data in one place.”
But, she says, there is a downside.
“It's great until something goes wrong, and then you really see how dependent you are on a handful of these companies.”
Editor's note: Amazon provides financial support to NPR and benefits from distributing some of NPR's content. Microsoft and Google also provide financial support to NPR.
