Database was completely down. Perplexity facing difficulties, just like Alexa, Snapchat, or Fortnite.
A Amazon Web Services (AWS), a largest server network in the cloud of the world, has faced technical problems since early Monday morning, causing failures in social networks, online gaming platforms, computer systems, websites and applications.
Two hours after the incident was first reported, AWS recorded a total of 58 services on your affected platform, including one completely below, the Amazon DynamoDB, which is a database, said EFE.
This Amazon service and the process it follows to communicate with a data center in the USA appear to be the origin of the problem, according to the details provided by AWS on its website.
AWS confirmed, on its website, that it had detected the first problems at around 07:11 (GMT, 08:11 in Lisbon) and said that it had identified a possible cause for the problem reported in one of its data centers in the USA, without providing details.
The company assured that it was “working on several parallel paths to speed up recovery” and recommended that customers “continue to retry any failed connection requests”.
“Engineers responded immediately and are actively working to mitigate the issue and fully understand its root cause,” explained AWS, in the most recent update on its website.
The reported errors occurred at AWS facilities in the north of the state of Virginia, in the United States (US), one of the company’s oldest and largest data centers, AWS confirmed.
According to incidents collected by the Downdetector portal, at around 10:00 (in Lisbon), thousands of incidentsboth related to AWS and its multiple services, and to thousands of social networks, websites, online gaming platforms and mobile applications around the world.
The artificial intelligence engine Perplexity was facing difficulties, as was the virtual assistant Alexa, o Snapchat, or popular games like Fortnite e Clash Royale.
Response in Europe
A European Commission began to use “traditional methods” as ‘e-mails’, due to the technical problems encountered this morning in the largest cloud server network in the world, and will evaluate “additional measures” regarding its communication networks.
“I can tell you, from my own experience, that this morning we were using more, for example, ’emails’, and we returned to our traditional methods”, said the European Commission’s main spokesperson, Paula Pinho, at the institution’s daily press conference in Brussels.
“As soon as we have clarification from the company about what led to this interruption, we will see if we need to take additional measures, also in terms of resilience of our own communication networks”, said the person in charge.
Recovery
However, by the end of the morning, Amazon Web Services ensured that the majority of its services were already recovered, following errors detected in one of its regions in the USA, which caused incidents for thousands of users around the world.
The world’s largest cloud server network reported that it is working to achieve a complete resolution of services, following the interruption that affected social networks, gaming platforms, computer systems, websites and applications around the world.
According to the company, most requests to AWS services should already be processed “correctly”, although Errors may still be detected due to backlog of orders.
