A significant outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) has led to widespread disruptions across the internet this morning. Numerous popular applications, games, and websites were impacted, including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, and Duolingo.
Timeline of Events
Users began experiencing issues around 8 AM UK time (midnight PT). This outage was recorded on Downdetector, which showed a dramatic surge in outage reports from various services dependent on AWS.
Source of the Outage
The problems appear to originate from one of Amazon’s large data center facilities located in North Virginia, a vital node for global internet connectivity. Amazon acknowledged the issue on its AWS status page, citing “increased error rates” and delays affecting numerous services.
Affected AWS Services
Amazon pinpointed two critical services at the heart of the disruption:
- Amazon DynamoDB
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
These services are foundational, providing database and computing resources utilized by thousands of businesses. This explains the widespread nature of the outage, as failures in these core services ripple across many platforms.
Scope of the Disruption
Downdetector’s data illustrated the scale of the outage. The platform’s homepage was dominated by spikes in outage reports from various sectors, highlighting that the problem was not confined to a single app.
Services Impacted
Some of the most affected categories and services include:
- Social Media: Snapchat
- Gaming: Roblox, Fortnite, Clash Royale, Rocket League
- Productivity & Education: Canva, Duolingo
- Amazon Services: Amazon.com, Alexa, Prime Video
- Finance & Streaming: Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase
Current Status and Future Updates
As of now, Amazon is actively investigating the issue. They are working to restore full service, but no timeline has been provided for resolution. The situation remains fluid as updates are expected in the coming hours.
