Aws Outage North Virginia

AWS outage based in Northern Virginia region impacting cloud services around the world

That's how the boss of another big US tech firm Cloudflare put it – probably feeling very relieved that Monday's outage, hitting over USA 1,000 companies and affecting millions of internet users, had nothing to do with him.

The places hit by the outage vary significantly. It took out major social media platforms like Snapchat and Reddit, banks like Lloyds and USA Halifax, and games like Roblox and Fortnite. AWS is a US giant with a large global footprint, having positioned itself as the backbone of the internet.It provides tools and computers which enable around a third of the USA internet to work, it offers storage space and database management, it saves firms from having to maintain their own costly set-ups, and it also connects traffic to those platforms.That's how it sells its services: let us look after your business's computing needs for you.But on Monday, something very mundane went very wrong: a common kind of outage known as a Domain Name System (USA DNS) error.

USA People who work in the tech USA industry will be rolling their eyes right now.

This common error can cause a lot of havoc.

"It's always DNS!" is something I hear a lot.When someone taps an app or clicks a link, their device is essentially sending a request to be connected to that service.DNS is supposed to act like a map, and on Monday, AWS lost its bearings – platforms like Snapchat, Canva and HMRC were all still there but it couldn't see where they were to direct traffic to them.These errors happen for a number of reasons.Usually it's a maintenance issue or a server failure. Sometimes that's human error, someone misconfiguring something somewhere, or in extreme cases a cyber attack - although there's no evidence of this so far.AWS said it occurred at its vast data centre plant in northern Virginia, its oldest and biggest site.A chorus of experts said it was a textbook illustration of the risks of putting all of your eggs in one basket in terms of a service provider - AWS is a giant and millions of businesses rely on it.And they are right, but the issue is there aren't many alternatives at the sheer scale provided by AWS.

There are only two main contenders in fact, and they're both other US giants: Microsoft's Azure and Google's Cloud Platform.Smaller rivals include IBM and the Chinese firm Alibaba. The parent company of the supermarket Lidl launched a European rival called Stackit last year, in direct competition with Amazon.

But AWS remains the dominant player by some margin.Some argue the UK and Europe urgently needs to build up its own infrastructure and be less reliant on the US for cloud services – while others say it's too late.Someone working in government once told me an MP informally proposed creating a UK version of AWS."But what's the point?" came the reply. "We already have AWS, over there."

Perhaps incidents like Monday's massive outage highlight why it's not quite that simple.

It took a day without Amazon Web Services for Americans to realize how reliant the USA internet is on a single USA company.

It’s not just that people couldn’t place mobile orders for coffee at Starbucks or ask USA Alexa for the weather. Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.

AWS is one of a small group of cloud computing juggernauts that form the backbone of the internet, providing businesses with backend computing tools needed to power crucial parts of their daily operations. That includes everything from storage to virtual servers that companies can use to develop and deploy apps without investing in their own hardware.

While other cloud providers exist, they lack the scale and reach of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. These three power the majority of the world’s cloud services, around 60% of the market, Roy Illsley, chief analyst at Omdia, told CNN. But among those three, AWS is the largest with roughly 37% of the market, according to research firm Gartner. AWS has a customer base of 4 million, according to an HG Insights report published this year.

So when a platform like AWS goes down, it has a cascading effect.

One expert already estimated the total impact of the disruption will be in the billions of dollars.

“It creates a very large single point of failure that then impacts operations at warehouses, deliveries, people being able to sell their goods and services to websites,” Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, told 

Debi Dougherty and her husband were affected by the AWS fallout on nearly every stop of their Monday morning errands in and around New Albany, Indiana.

To start the day, Dougherty was pinged with Ring alerts that there was a car in her driveway, but she couldn’t view the camera. She figured it was a Ring issue.

However, when at the doctor’s office for her husband’s first radiation therapy appointment, the scheduling software was so spotty that it took 40 minutes to book the next 25 days of appointments – something that usually only takes a few minutes.

The next stop at Kohl’s brought more delays. The line was backed up because the credit card reader was on the fritz.

The Doughertys then stopped for lunch at Cattleman’s Roadhouse, where the manager offered to pay for their meal because the restaurant was unable to process cards.

“He said, ‘This is no fault of yours, and you’re already eating. I don’t guess you all have cash?’” Debi Dougherty said. “And we both looked at each other, and I’m like, ‘Not enough to cover this meal.’”Still, she said, the Monday morning experience was “frightening” to say the least, knowing how dependent society is on technology.“(The businesses) put all their eggs in one (AWS) basket, because it’s affected so many different industries,” she said. “And, perhaps, that’s not the smartest thing to do.”Cattleman’s, which uses the Toast point-of-sale system that’s reliant on AWS, was grateful that the outage happened on a Monday, and not a Friday, Saturday or Sunday, said Cameron Sharp, the New Albany location’s general manager.“If this goes into multiday, or heaven forbid – and let me find some wood here so I can knock on it – goes into the weekend, we’re in trouble,” Sharp said.Sharp ultimately had to comp just the one meal Monday before realizing that one Toast terminal at the restaurant could store the transactions.

“Our entire economy is based on commerce,” he said. “Because we’re so tied together, this (AWS outage) is going to screw with a lot of folks.”

Over in the broader Houston area, Dia Giordano was spending her Monday trying to untangle the mess that the outage made for her three businesses: an Italian restaurant, eight mental health clinics and a couple of rental properties.

DoorDash was “blowing up” her phone starting at 2 a.m., warning that the online ordering system, which is run through Toast, was down.

“What that means is one-third of my business is gone for the day,” she told CNN. “At least with the publicity (of the outage), people might be understanding, but I’m still getting messages asking if we’re open, because the website is just gone. It’s just not there.”

Toast, when reached Monday, declined comment.

At Giordano’s mental health clinics, her practitioners and administrative staff members were unable to validate clients’ insurance information because the online clearinghouse for that information wasn’t working.

Amazon Confirms AWS Outage Fixed After Widespread Internet Disruptions Worldwide

Amazon confirmed late Monday that its massive AWS outage has been fully resolved, ending a day of global internet problems that disrupted thousands of online services — from fast food apps to school platforms and crypto exchanges.

USA Amazon blamed the disruption on a problem with its domain name system (DNS), which helps computers find websites.When DNS fails, websites and apps can't load properly, causing widespread outages.More than 11 million outage reports were logged by monitoring site DownDetector, affecting over 2,500 major companies.USA Users saw issues with video games like Fortnite and Roblox, apps like Venmo and Coinbase, and educational platforms like Canvas — used by millions of students across North America.Schools, including Ohio State University and the University of California, Riverside, said students couldn't access homework, quizzes, or course materials."I currently can't grade any online assignments, and my students can't access their materials," said Damien P. Williams, a professor at UNC Charlotte.Amazon's own services also took a hit. People using Alexa smart speakers, Ring doorbells, and even Kindle e-books reported problems throughout the day.By late evening, Amazon reported that new EC2 instance launches were mostly back to normal, and function errors in Lambda were dropping.Cybersecurity experts confirmed it was not a cyberattack. "This looks like a good old-fashioned technology issue," said Bryson Bort, CEO of security firm Scythe. "Most of the time, it's human error."The outage renewed concerns about the world's heavy reliance on just a few cloud providers. "The world now runs on the cloud," said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert in the UK. When a single provider goes down, "everything else starts to fall apart."We're wrapping up our live coverage of a mass outage that caused swathes of the internet to fall apart today.Amazon Web Services says it has fixed the underlying cause - but many of the world's biggest websites will be reeling from the outage which put them out of action for much of the day.

The outage hit early today, and affected companies as varied as Snapchat, Roblox, Zoom, Coinbase, HMRC and even banking services like Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax.

The root of the problem was a malfunction at Amazon Web Services, the tech giant's cloud computing division, whose infrastructure underpins millions of large companies' websites and platforms.

While outages affecting web platforms and services are nothing new, multiple sites going down in one single outage are somewhat less common - but experts say they are becoming more frequent, according to our technology reporter Liv McMahon.

With much of our lives being online these days, the pressure on cloud services is only increasing all the time, writes technology reporter Shiona McCallum - and events like these highlight the fragility of these systems.AWS now says its cloud division has "returned to normal operations" and Downdetector reports of AWS issues have trailed off. Now the blame game starts as companies start to try and recoup losses from today, says our North America technology correspondent Lily Jamali.Check out our additional coverage for more information on what went wrong and why.Wondering why your ride-share app froze, digital wallet was not working, or a game failed to load on your server?

Here is what we know about the cause of an outage that ground more than 1,000 companies' digital services to a halt:First, the outage originated in AWS's northern Virginia cluster, known as US-EAST-1, which is the world's largest cloud provider.It's the third time in five years a major internet outage has stemmed from the northern Virginia data centre.Second, we know the Domain Name System (DNS) is also the likely cause of the fault. Likened to the internet's "phone book", the DNS can "paralyse" entire applications and services if it domain name resolution stops working, according to experts.We have been promised a detailed rundown by AWS of what went wrong, known as a "post-event summary", although that could take weeks or months.

Amazon Web Service programs have "returned to normal operations", bringing an end to the 15-hour long outage.In an earlier update the company said the underlying cause of the outage had been fixed, while noting there were still connectivity issues on some AWS services.This had included its Lambda service, which helps smartphones and computers run apps from the cloud.

AWS now says the final technical problems have been fixed and it will later provide a full rundown detailing the cause and scope of the outage.An IT security officer at Thomas Cook's parent company says issues with a server's Domain Name System (DNS) typically triggers major outages.Marek Szustak, who works at eSky Group, explains that AWS's outage is to do with DNS - explained as the internet's 'phone book' - which is the "foundation of network communication".He says that when domain name resolution stops working, entire applications and services can come to a halt, no matter how well they are designed.

Though a "seemingly minor piece of infrastructure", Szustak points out that DNS can "paralyse" the largest cloud environments."As engineers say, it's always DNS," he says.

Consumer champion Matt Allwright warns that scammers could take advantage of people during an internet outage."People will be struggling to access things they enjoy using, or eally need to use, when it comes to things like banking," he told Morning Live.

He urges users not to panic if they see an error message when they're trying to use their banking services."Just ask yourself how important it is to make that transaction right now," he says. "If the answer is that it's very important, then get in touch with your bank directly using a number that you trust.""The last thing you want to do is entertain a phone call out of the blue right now saying I can offer you a solution," he says.

Allwright adds that it's best to stay calm and wait until the issue resolves.

Posted on 2025/10/21 04:43 PM