Update, December 15, 3:30 p.m. ET: Amazon has resolved its issue and most AWS-reliant websites are fully functional again following this morning's outage.
What you need to know
- Amazon Web Services has gone down for the second time this month.
- Many websites reliant on Amazon's cloud hosting services are down, including Twitch, DoorDash, Xbox Live, and T-Mobile. (At least it wasn't on T-Mobile Tuesdays this time.)
- It's unclear how long this outage might last, but here's hoping it doesn't take the rest of the day like it did last time.
Eight days after a six-hour AWS outage took down everything from Ring security cameras to the McDonald's app, Amazon Web Services is down again, and it once again took dozens of apps and services with it. Outage dashboard DownDetector shows many of the same sites as last week have significant issues, including Disney+, Ring, Twitch, DoorDash, and both PSN and Xbox Live.
Last week's outage was related to issues at an AWS facility in Virginia, and today's outage seems to stem from issues in Oregon and North California according to the AWS Service Health Dashboard and it seems like the root cause has been found and fixes are being implemented:
"We have identified the root cause of the Internet connectivity to the US-WEST-1 Region [and US-WEST-2 Region] and have taken steps to restore connectivity. We have seen some improvement to Internet connectivity in the last few minutes but continue to work towards full recovery."
Internet outages bringing down nodes of a widespread hosting service like AWS are at least somewhat inevitable, but AWS seems to be having trouble quickly redirecting and spreading the load of a downed facility to the rest of the network to prevent widespread outages. We can only hope that this outage doesn't take half the day to fully resolve Just like last week's outage, Ring users are having trouble logging in or accessing their cameras and security sensors, and many Amazon services are down.
Update (3:30 p.m. ET) ― Service has been restored
Indeed, Amazon has found the root cause of its internet connectivity issues at the Oregon and North California Amazon Web Services facilities. Most sites and services using AWS have come back online and seem to be functioning normally.
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