A significant outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday reminded us all just how dependent we’ve become on cloud technology. The disruption began around 3 a.m. Eastern, affecting not only Amazon services such as Alexa and Ring products, but many third-party platforms that use AWS as well.
Apps for services such as WhatsApp, Venmo, Hulu, Coinbase, Roblox, Slack, Duolingo, Starbucks and McDonald’s went down, as well as the official U.K. government website, just to name a few. Travelers encountered long lines and some delays in airports as the United and Delta apps were down, and check-ins and baggage services were disrupted.
As of Monday afternoon Amazon was still investigating the exact cause of the outage, but it had narrowed things down and begun restoring services. The problem originated in the Domain Name System (DNS) resolution of its DynamoDB service, specifically from an endpoint located in northern Virginia. Recovery was still ongoing more than 10 hours after the initial disruption began.
