On Tuesday, June 13th, 2023, Amazon Web Services (AWS) had an outage, causing massive disruptions to multiple important websites. Although the firm maintains that the problem has been mostly rectified, the outage lasted almost two hours and left a path of operational issues in its wake.
According to the AWS health dashboard, the company’s technical teams responded quickly and launched an investigation to determine the main cause. They quickly established that the issue stemmed from a subsystem in charge of capacity control for AWS Lambda, a service that allows users to run computer programs without having to maintain servers. Customers were immediately harmed by this incident, which resulted in mistakes and service outages.
The widespread outage impacted several high-profile websites from diverse industries. During the outage, prominent media news sites such as The Associated Press and the Boston Globe were unable to function. The timing was especially terrible because it coincided with former President Donald Trump’s arraignment in a Miami court, rendering news companies unable to offer real-time updates.
In addition to media outlets, prominent food delivery applications such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell experienced outages, forcing consumers who place food orders to be inconvenienced. The ripple effect spread to other industries, with firms such as Nike, Hulu, DoorDash, and Delta experiencing service outages.
The sources for this piece include an article in BBC.