The Independent's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission.
Amazon down - latest updates: Company says it does not have ‘ETA for full recovery’
Follow the latest updates
Amazon Web Services, the shopping giant’s internet infrastructure arm, is experiencing technical issues that are echoing across much of the rest of the internet.
A variety of websites and services were hit by problems, which started at approximately 5:00pm GMT yesterday, apparently because of issues with the underlying technology.
That included many of the world’s biggest apps and services, from Disney Plus and Tinder to Coinbase. Games were also hit, with PUBG and League of Legends seeming to go down.
It also hit other Amazon-owned services, including the Alexa voice assistant, the Kindle, Amazon Music and its Ring security cameras.
But it did not appear to be a problem in all locations. Amazon said the problems were in the “US-EAST-1” which is hosted in Virginia and serves areas nearby, meaning that people reliant on other parts of the AWS network may still be able to load services, though it might perform more slowly than usual.
Hundreds of Amazon workers share tales of chaos on social media
Hundreds of Amazon employees have said that the company’s delivery operation is in disarray as applications used by the workers have been unusable.
Both the Flex app, used for deliveries, and the Dolphin app, used for time tracking and other uses, have been affected.
The owner of an Amazon delivery company in Florida told Motherboard that “AWS servers are down, and only about 50 % of my people can deliver. Most cannot login”.
Hundreds of Amazon staff members have posted about the issues at the company on social media.
“I am making more money than Jeff Bezos in this moment. Right now everything is down worldwide and I am still getting paid double overtime. Amazon is on standstill so I’m sure this second alone he is losing $$$$$,” a user wrote on the subreddit called FASCAmazon, a page for workers at Amazon’s fulfilment centres and delivery stations.
AWS: Problems caused by ‘impairment of several network devices'
Amazon Web Services said in a status update that they are “seeing impact to multiple AWS APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region”.
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programmes.
The impacted services include EC2, Connect, DynamoDB, Glue, Athena, Timestream, Chime, as well as “other AWS Services”, according to the company.
They said the cause of the problem is an “impairment of several network devices” on the US east coast.
AWS added that they 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”.
They added that “root logins for consoles in all AWS regions are affected by this issue”.
Third Amazon outage of 2021
Amazon has said that not all parts of the world have been affected by the outage, adding that the area that has been hit the hardest is the eastern coast of the US.
Users of the Amazon shopping site have reported slow loading times, but many have still been able to make purchases.
Services like Ring surveillance cameras, Chime – an app for mobile banking, and robot vacuum iRobot have all reported having problems.
This is the third time an outage hits Amazon this year, the BBC reported. Users experienced a short outage in June when services like Prime Video and Amazon Alexa stopped working. The outage also affected Shopify, PayPal, and CNN.
Outage brings down internal Amazon tools
The outage has also taken down tools used internally at Amazon.
Employees, both in warehouses and those delivering packages and driving for Amazon’s Flex service, have reported that the Flex app or the AtoZ app are unusable, making staff members unable to scan packages and get access to delivery routes, CNBC reported.
Sellers on Amazon have said that they can’t use Seller Central, the internal site used to handle orders from customers.
Outage reports decrease as company reports ‘signs of recovery'
Shortly after 11am on Tuesday, AWS saw more than 11,000 reports of outages, a figure that had decreased to below 5,000 reports after 1pm, according to Down Detector.
Just before noon, almost 27,000 outage reports were submitted concerning Amazon. Around 1.30pm, that number had decreased to just over 8,000 reports.
AWS has said that they are seeing “signs of recovery”.
AWS: ‘We do not have an ETA for full recovery at this time'
In an update on the service health dashboard for Amazon Web Services, the company said that while they have identified the “root cause of the issue causing service API and console issues in the US-EAST-1 Region and are starting to see some signs recovery,” they still “do not have an ETA for full recovery at this time”.
Robinhood, Instacart, Ring affected by AWS outage
According to Down Detector, some of the services affected by the Amazon outage include:
- Amazon
- Amazon Prime Music
- League of Legends
- Ring
- Disney+
- Amazon Alexa
- Prime Video
- Instacart
- Venmo
- Robinhood
Amazon says outage is affecting ‘monitoring and incident response’
On the status update webpage for Amazon Web Services, the company says the outage is “affecting some of our monitoring and incident response tooling, which is delaying our ability to provide updates”.
According to the status page, the issue appears to remain at Amazon facilities in Northern Virginia.
Amazon and web services hit by technical issues
Amazon said that it had found the “root cause and we are actively working towards recovery”, though it gave no indication of how long that might take.
Amazon Web Services provide the technology that powers much of the internet. It sells those services to other unrelated companies, meaning that any issues with AWS can quickly take down other, apparently unconnected, parts of the web.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments