12/07/2021
Amazon Web Services Outage Takes Businesses, Services Offline
Downdetector showed reports of outages from more than 11,000 users
Amazon Web Services allows customers to rent computing, storage and network capabilities.
PHOTO: NOAH BERGER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Omar Abdel-Baqui and Aaron Tilley
Updated Dec. 7, 2021 4:10 pm ET
An hourslong outage on Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing unit Tuesday left Roomba vacuum cleaners dormant, streaming services blank and delayed buyers from snapping up Adele presale concert tickets.
Users began reporting issues with Amazon Web Services around 10:45 a.m. EST, according to Downdetector, which tracks website outages. About a half-hour later, the site showed nearly 11,300 reports of outages. The outages appeared to be concentrated in New York, Washington and Chicago, according to Downdetector.
AWS is the largest cloud-computing provider in the U.S. The service allows customers, including many large businesses, to rent computing, storage and network capabilities. Companies and consumers have increasingly come to depend on cloud-computing services as the pandemic has forced them to work from home.
Downdetector showed outages Tuesday for many Amazon services, including streaming service Prime Music, videoconferencing tool Chime and home-security system Ring. Many third-party applications that sit on top of Amazon’s cloud were also receiving outage reports on Downdetector, such as Ticketmaster and streaming services from Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc.
AWS said it began investigating increased error rates and console issues in the US-East-1 region—which is hosted in Northern Virginia and covers cities including Boston, Houston and Chicago—at around 11:20 a.m. EST Tuesday. It said it had identified the root cause of the issue, which was affecting its global console landing page. “We are actively working towards recovery,” Amazon said in an update on its status dashboard.
Due to Amazon's cloud service, our online ordering system has been affected. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Free shipping on millions of items. Get the best of Shopping and Entertainment with Prime. Enjoy low prices and great deals on the largest selection of everyday essentials and other products, including fashion, home, beauty, electronics, Alexa Devices, sporting goods, toys, automotive, pets, baby, b...