Attendees walk through an exhibit hall during a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services at the Venetian Las Vegas on November 28, 2023, in Las Vegas. AWS is responsible for the infrastructure supporting 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 disrupted major websites and applications on Monday, demonstrating how critical a company’s online infrastructure has become to the operation of many modern businesses.
Amazon said it was resolving the issue, but some disruptions persisted Monday evening.
Tech experts told NPR that the incident highlights how vulnerable businesses are to these types of outages.
Here’s what you need to know about what happened and why a single outage could be so damaging.
The outage started early Monday
Amazon reported “an increase in error rates and latencies” starting at 3 a.m. ET that affected its Northern Virginia facilities.
Users have reported problems with popular websites and apps, including Duolingo and online games Roblox and Fortnite. Financial services companies like Coinbase, Robinhood and Venmo have also reported disruptions, as have companies that operate chatbots Perplexity and ChatGPT. Amazon said its main website was affected. United Airlines, Canva, Reddit and Flickr have also acknowledged problems with their websites. Associated Press, NPR and The New York Times“Games also said they were having issues.
Amazon said Monday evening that it was making “progress” in restoring full functionality.
How Amazon’s cloud computing powers much of the Internet
Amazon’s cloud computing service, AWS, is like an invisible scaffolding that helps much of the Internet function.
AWS allows businesses to store and manage data online using its DynamoDB database service, which was the service affected by the outage.
“In other words, they rent their cloud computing resources to others so that they can serve their own customers,” explains Chang Lou, assistant professor at the University of Virginia specializing in cloud computing.
However, an early morning software update to DynamoDB contained an error that caused service to stop in Northern Virginia. The error in this update subsequently caused a chain reaction of outages and service disruptions.
Amazon says it has invested more than $50 billion in data centers in the state, which is home to the largest cluster of data centers in the United States.
Amazon’s importance in cloud computing is mixed for customers
According to Synergy Research Group, AWS holds approximately 30% of the global cloud computing market. The other big players are Microsoft and Google.
Betsy Cooper, a cybersecurity expert and director of the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy, says there are pros and cons to businesses using Amazon or another large cloud computing provider. They offer strong cybersecurity protections and conveniences.
“We all have an incentive to go to big companies because they’re ubiquitous and it’s easier for us to access all of 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 financially supports NPR and pays to distribute some of NPR’s content. Microsoft and Google also financially support NPR.
