Amazon’s AWS Disruption Creates Outages for Hundreds of Websites for Hours

Amazon's cloud computing service, AWS, experienced a significant disruption on December 7th, 2021, causing widespread outages for hundreds of websites and online services for several hours. The outage affected a wide range of high-profile companies and organizations, including Hulu, Snapchat, McDonald's, and the British government's official website. The disruption was centered on AWS's US-EAST-1 region, which is one of the largest and most heavily used AWS regions. The exact cause of the outage remains unclear, but Amazon stated that most services were restored after a few hours. The incident highlights the reliance of many businesses and organizations on cloud computing services like AWS, and the potential for widespread impacts when such services experience disruptions. It also underscores the importance of robust contingency planning and diversification of cloud service providers to mitigate the risk of such outages in the future.