A significant outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted thousands of websites and online platforms early on March 11, 2024. Major services affected included Amazon.com, Prime Video, and popular gaming and social media sites like Roblox, Fortnite, Facebook, and Snapchat. The disruption began around 3:11 AM ET, with AWS initially reporting an “operational issue” impacting 14 different services in its US-EAST-1 region, located in northern Virginia.
As the morning progressed, AWS noted “significant signs of recovery.” However, users continued to experience delays due to a backlog of requests, according to NBC News. The outage had a widespread effect, impacting major media outlets, including the New York Times, and services like the digital Ring doorbell and apps such as Signal and Venmo. Even the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, Coinbase, faced interruptions.
The root cause of the outage was traced to DynamoDB, Amazon’s database management system, which supports numerous applications. The AWS health dashboard indicated that engineers were working on “multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” as reported by CNN. This incident highlights the critical role AWS plays in the infrastructure of the modern internet, given its extensive data storage and service capabilities.
AWS is a cornerstone of digital services, boasting an impressive revenue of $107 billion for the 2024 financial year, which constitutes 17% of Amazon’s total revenue. The company has been actively expanding its investment in artificial intelligence products, further underscoring its significance in the tech landscape.
The outage also impacted AWS’s automated support ticketing system, which went offline, making it difficult for customers to report issues. This added to the frustration for users and businesses reliant on AWS for their operations. As recovery efforts continue, many are left reflecting on the dependency of modern digital platforms on a single service provider.
