Amazon Web Services (AWS) reported on Monday that it resolved a significant outage that affected numerous major websites and applications for most of the day. The incident reportedly impacted over 1,000 platforms, including popular social media sites like Snapchat and banking services such as Lloyds and Halifax.
During the outage, user reports of issues peaked at more than 11 million, as indicated by Downdetector, a service that monitors website performance. The problems originated around 07:00 BST, with users experiencing difficulties across a range of services, including online games and educational applications. Reports from Downdetector more than doubled typical weekday figures, confirming that many users were unable to access services.
By approximately 23:00 BST, Amazon announced that all AWS services had returned to normal operations. The company had to implement throttling measures to address the issues effectively, but experts noted the risks associated with significant reliance on a single cloud provider. Prof. Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey remarked on the interdependence of online services, emphasizing that dependability on third-party infrastructure can lead to widespread issues.
Although AWS has acknowledged the outage’s roots in “DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1,” detailed explanations of the cause have not yet been released. DNS, which translates website names into machine-readable numbers, is crucial for internet functionality, and disruptions can prevent users from locating desired content.
Experts suggest the incident raises questions about cloud service dominance, with concerns regarding the concentration of infrastructure control. Some argue that companies using AWS should develop more resilient systems to prevent such outages from affecting their operations. The potential for legal ramifications exists, as companies experience significant financial losses during such outages.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20pgp3nx07o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss