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Amazon runs the single biggest Cloud Computing service on the web, with practically every major online company making use of their S3 offer in order to run their websites. So it wasn’t such a big surprise when the internet partially broke once S3 started experiencing major issues. The incident caused an online outage all across the US that lasted 4 hours.
Not a lot of internet users know what S3 or even Cloud Computing really is, but it is essential for the effective functioning of practically all modern online services. As USA Today points out, even though it’s better known for being the single biggest online shopping site in the country, Amazon has the lion’s share in this industry.
By providing cloud storage to giants like Netflix, Spotify, even BuzzFeed, Amazon has made its S3 service indispensable. As a result, any damage or issue that occurs with the service will also affect some major internet assets, which is exactly what happened on one of its storage sites.
The site in question is found in the northern parts of Virginia, where the servers started encountering problems at about 11:45 AM, Pacific Time. By 2:08 PM, the issue had been resolved, but this left a 4-hour gap that companies and users had to contend with. In the world of information technology, those 4 hours would have been enough to disrupt certain transactions and cause massive revenue damages.
S3 is one of the oldest cloud computing infrastructures in the market, CNET reports, having been established back in 2006. It was first meant to support Amazon’s ambitions of providing users with a cohesive online shopping experience by coordinating stocks, availability, listings, and even deals.
Even so, S3 was meant to be a solid service and was designed to be practically invincible. Amazon was relying on it for its entire business infrastructure, after all. The company is assuring the public that it already identified the root cause of the problem. As to whether or not S3 is vulnerable to repeat this incident, however, is the question.
