Petteri Pyyny
26 Nov 2020 4:05
As more and more companies, websites and net-based services rely on cloud computing, the risks have also increased dramatically. Yesterday, we saw what happens when such services go crashing down.
Amazon is the dominant player in cloud computing, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) having 45 percent market share, crushing the competition, most notably, Google and Microsoft.
Yesterday, AWS experienced major outage, that lasted for several hours. The outage was mostly isolated to AWS's one U.S. region, dubbed as us-east-1 region. Despite the limited geographical scale, the services that relied only on that AWS datacenter, were hit badly.
Some of the largest services that were deeply hit included Adobe's cloud services and Roku streaming services. Amazon's biggest clients, such as Apple and Netflix, didn't experience outages - probably because they use several different AWS datacenters and were able to re-route their traffic to other locations.
Most interesting outcomes of the outage were experienced by users who had adopted various smart, connected home appliances. For example, Roomba robotic vacuums stopped working through the iRobot Home app.
An Amazon AWS outage is currently impacting our iRobot Home App. Please know that our team is aware and monitoring the situation and hope to get the App back online soon. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
-- iRobot (@iRobot) November 25, 2020
Twitter users also reported how their Christmas lights stopped working and how their Ring doorbells didn't work during the AWS outage. Also, bit more traditional problems arose, as both Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune reported problems with their online services.
My fucking doorbell doesn't work because AWS us-east-1 is having issues 🤦🏿♂️
-- SJP (ಠ_ಠ) (@SJP1804) November 25, 2020
Anyone else unable to turn on their Christmas lights because of the AWS outage?
-- Brian Ragazzi (@brianragazzi) November 25, 2020
Eventually, Amazon managed to restore its AWS connectivity.