For those that missed it, early Monday morning Amazon Web services (AWS) had a very significant outage. This was especially disruptive to the cloud computing infrastructure that most online operations worldwide depend on. This was the same disruption that brought down thousands of other online services—from fast food ordering apps to school learning platforms to cryptocurrency exchanges. Consequently, users globally faced large-scale disruptions in connectivity.
The outage, which began early Wednesday at 6 a.m. ET, escalated quickly. Monitoring site DownDetector logged more than 11 million user-submitted reports of the problem. The collision impacted mission-critical services for over 2,500 large enterprises that rely on AWS’s shared services. This event made it quite clear how critical AWS has become in the current internet ecosystem.
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Lambda from Amazon Web Services—two of the most ubiquitous services indispensable to developing and maintaining cloud-based services today. In short, these services are critical to operating the mainstays of today’s internet. Throughout the day, many engineers were hard at work doing everything possible to start making it right. By late evening the following day, AWS reported EC2 instance launches had returned to normal across the board. In parallel, 5XX Lambda function errors were decreasing.
Damien P. Williams, a professor at UNC Charlotte, expressed frustration over the impact on educational activities:
“I currently can’t grade any online assignments, and my students can’t access their materials.” – Damien P. Williams
Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert from the UK, underscored the pervasive reliance on cloud services in today’s digital environment, stating:
“The world now runs on the cloud.” – Patrick Burgess
Earlier this month during the ERP outage, Bryson Bort—CEO of security firm Scythe—hailed the breach as
“a good old-fashioned technology issue.” – Bryson Bort
This outage should be our wake-up call. It exemplifies the fragility of our often invisible, yet interconnected, digital threads that underpin our everyday life. Unlike other previous outages, AWS’s global reach meant that these disrupted services affected people across the world. Users across the globe struggled to access essential services.
By late Monday evening, Amazon reported that the AWS outage was entirely restored. Our engineers worked tirelessly to bring all necessary services back online. Their quick actions allayed fears over long-term interruptions.
