People struggled to access social media app Snapchat, online game Fortnite, payment app Venmo and other popular online services on Monday after an Amazon Web Services outage caused widespread outages.
Down detectora website that tracks network outages said the AWS outage resulted in more than 11 million reports across all services. According to the site, more than 2,500 companies have received an increased number of reports of problems.
The outage was another reminder of how consumers, businesses and even government organizations rely on AWS and its massive cloud to power their websites, apps and other online services.
Here's what you need to know about the AWS outage.
What are Amazon Web Services?
Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing services to millions of customers, including companies and organizations in various sectors such as technology, entertainment, government, education and financial services.
The cloud provider offers more than 200 services that allow businesses to store data, host websites and access computing power. Businesses pay Amazon based on their consumption of these services, so they don't have to own and maintain data centers and servers themselves.
According to AWS, in the second quarter of this year it captured about 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, ahead of its competitors Microsoft and Google. Research group “Synergy”.
How does the outage impact companies that rely on AWS?
As businesses rely on AWS, the outage caused users to experience issues using a variety of services, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite and Signal, according to DownDetector. People have even encountered problems accessing Amazon products like the Alexa smart speaker and Ring doorbell cameras.
Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, posted on social media site X that some users were unable to access the company's online platform due to an AWS outage, but that “all funds are safe.”
Airlines such as United and Delta There were also disruptions with customers reporting they were unable to check their reservations or check in luggage.
While companies were dealing with outages, Elon Musk took a swipe at AWS by posting “X is working” on his social network.
What caused the shutdown?
AWS began reporting problems shortly after midnight PDT, saying it was investigating bugs in its Amazon DynamoDB database service.
By 8:43 a.m. PT, Amazon said it had “narrowed down the source of network connectivity issues that impacted AWS services.”
“The root cause is the underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers,” the company said in its announcement. health dashboard. This issue affects more than 90 AWS services.
This was announced to the media by Rob Jardine, chief digital officer of cybersecurity company NymVPN. CNBC And CNN in a statement that “there is no indication that this AWS outage was caused by a cyber attack – it appears to be a technical fault affecting one of Amazon's main data centers.”
“These issues can arise when systems become overloaded or a key part of the network goes down, and with so many websites and applications relying on AWS, the consequences spread quickly,” he said in a statement.
An Amazon spokesperson said the company posts updates to its status dashboard and had no further comment.
Have AWS outages happened before?
Yes, AWS outages have happened before, including briefly in 2023, for various reasons, such as human error.
One main ABC 2021 saw an outage that took popular websites and services offline and disrupted use of products such as vacuum cleaners and cat food dispensers.
In 2017 employee entered an incorrect command during a debugging procedure, causing more servers to go down than expected. People have reported problems with Venmo, Apple's iCloud services and other apps.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
