Amazon server outage hits popular streaming apps, websites; fixes released

A server-end issue with Amazon Web Services (AWS) earlier today caused a bunch of popular apps, services and websites to experience errors and downtime.  

Amazon has since confirmed that the issue is fairly widespread, but has largely affected companies that use its AWS servers in the “East-1” region of the United States. 

The affected services were a result of network device issues on AWS servers, on which a large chunk of internet apps are hosted. Amazon Web Services is one of the more popular cloud services platforms, alongside Google Cloud and Microsoft’s Azure services. 

Read more: AWS launches re/Start programme for cloud aspirants

According to a CNBC report yesterday, services that were affected by the AWS outage include popular streaming platforms Disney Plus and Netflix. Games such as Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (popularly known as PUBG), along with other popular ones such as League of Legends and Valorant, are also said to have experienced downtime. 

Other services that were affected by the AWS outage include Tinder, cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, workplace messaging app Slack, and a host of Amazon’s internal apps and services that its employees use to facilitate deliveries and warehouse operations. 

After Amazon’s initial acknowledgement of the issue, the company published a statement on the issue, saying, “We are seeing impact to multiple AWS APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue is also affecting some of our monitoring and incident response tooling, which is delaying our ability to provide updates. Services impacted include: EC2, Connect, DynamoDB, Glue, Athena, Timestream, and Chime and other AWS Services in US-EAST-1.” 

“The root cause of this issue is an impairment of several network devices in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are pursuing multiple mitigation paths in parallel, and have seen some signs of recovery, but we do not have an ETA for full recovery at this time.  

Root logins for consoles in all AWS regions are affected by this issue, however customers can login to consoles other than US-EAST-1 by using an IAM role for authentication,” the statement added. 

At the time of publishing, Amazon said that most services have been restored, and most network device issues have been resolved as well. However, it is still investigating isolated issues with specific apps and services, which can be tracked on the AWS dashboard.