On Monday, the internet was in disarray. For hours, a large portion of the internet simply stopped working, be it social media apps like Snapchat and Reddit or business services for banks and airlines. The reason behind the chaos was an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is a cloud service provider that stores user data and provides computing power to various companies.
The outage at AWS simply left millions of users helpless as various apps and websites were unable to retrieve data from Amazon’s servers, taking down a large part of the internet.
What caused the AWS outage?
The outage started from Amazon Web Services’ oldest data centre, located in Virginia, USA. As per the BBC, this is the third outage from the Virginia AWS centre in the last five years.
The problem stemmed from what is known as the Domain Name System (DNS). A DNS essentially turns a website into a numeric IP address, allowing users to access the website through the server.
An update to the DNS stopped computers from accessing the correct addresses for all websites through AWS’s DynamoDB AP. DynamoDB is a cloud database that stores critical user information. This led to the massive online outage rendering 113 services useless for hours.
When did the AWS outage occur?
The AWS outage occurred at 7:11 am GMT (or 12:41 pm IST). According to DownDetector, apps including Apple TV, Pinterest, and WhatsApp were affected. The impact was also felt by the AI platform, Perplexity and gaming services such as Xbox.
How long did the AWS outage last?
The AWS outage lasted for roughly three years. By 10:11 am GMT (or 3:41 pm IST), Amazon had confirmed that everything was back to normal operations. However, there was a “backlog of messages that they will finish processing over the next few hours” Apart from the backlog, things got back on-track after the company’s announcement.
