An unexpected outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted some of the world’s most popular websites and applications on Tuesday evening. Users reported issues accessing services such as Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, and many others, according to Down Detector, a platform that tracks online service disruptions.
The outage, which began earlier in the day, was attributed to a problem within AWS’s infrastructure. By 9:35 PM, AWS announced that the underlying issue had been “fully mitigated,” though a backlog meant some services were still in the process of returning to normal.
Impact on Major Websites and Services
The outage affected a wide range of services, leaving users unable to access platforms critical for both personal and professional use. Among the affected were:
- Snapchat
- My Fitness Pal
- Epic Games Store
- Fortnite
- Canva
- Roblox
- Hinge
- Tinder
- Signal
- Duolingo
- PlayStation Network
- XBox
- Steam
- Ubisoft Connect
- Pokemon Go
- Zoom
- Xero
- EA Games
- Strava
- Optus
- 9Now
- Disney+
- Tidal
- Ring doorbells
- Among Us
- Lloyds Bank
- Halifax
- Slack
- Amazon Alexa
- Life360
- BT
- Bank of Scotland
- Virgin Media
- Vodafone
- EE
- 3
- Blink Security
- HM Revenue and Customs
- Microsoft 365
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft Teams
- Just Eat
Amazon’s Response and Restoration Efforts
Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon, plays a critical role in providing cloud computing services to a vast array of businesses and platforms. Just after 8 PM, AWS engineers identified a potential root cause of the outage and began restoring services.
“We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services,” AWS stated. “We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered.”
By 9:35 PM, AWS confirmed that the “underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated” and that most requests were processing normally. Despite this, some users continued to face delays as services worked through the backlog.
Understanding Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is a cornerstone of modern internet infrastructure, offering cloud computing solutions that allow businesses to avoid the costs and complexities of owning and maintaining physical data centers. Instead, AWS provides on-demand access to computing power, storage, and databases.
Founded by Jeff Bezos, AWS caters to companies of all sizes and industries, supporting a variety of functions from data backup and disaster recovery to software development and big data analytics.
Implications and Future Considerations
This outage highlights the dependency many businesses have on cloud service providers like AWS. As more companies migrate to cloud-based solutions, the resilience and reliability of such services become increasingly critical.
Experts suggest that businesses should consider multi-cloud strategies to mitigate risks associated with service disruptions. This approach involves using multiple cloud service providers to ensure continuity and reduce dependency on a single provider.
As AWS continues to address the aftermath of this outage, affected companies and users are likely to scrutinize their reliance on cloud services and explore additional safeguards to protect against future disruptions.
The incident serves as a reminder of the interconnected nature of modern digital services and the importance of robust infrastructure to support the global digital economy.
