AWS outage highlights Leslie Lamport's definition of distributed systems

This week's major cloud outage is certainly not the reason to gloat. Can happen to any cloud provider or to the on-prem data center. But it does highlight the point that some workloads should perhaps have less dependency on a cloud and be able to operate in a disconnected way at least for some period of time. If only there was a database that could operate like an extension of a cloud (or totally standalone). Oh wait... may be there's one? https://lnkd.in/gJN8JV8Z

"The malfunctions also highlighted some of the risks in making so many aspects of everyday life dependent on cloud-based technologies, which Alan Woodward, a professor of computing at England’s University of Surrey, said will always be prone to occasional failure. 'Complexity always causes issues,'...” Smart beds flipped out during the AWS outage, and so did their sleepy owners https://lnkd.in/d6e4pfdF

Hosts Mauven MacLeod and Graham Falkner deliver a fiery rant about the recent AWS US East 1 DNS outage and what it reveals about our dependence on cloud services. In this episode, they unpack the outage's real-world impact — from Snapchat and Venmo outages to Philips Hue bulbs and automated litter boxes going dark — and share colourful personal anecdotes, including a navigation fail on a Loch Lomond walk and a high‑tech mattress that turns into an expensive paperweight when the cloud hiccups. The pair dig into the technical and cultural roots of the problem: DNS as an ageing single point of failure, the dangers of concentrating critical infrastructure in one region, cost‑cutting that sacrifices resilience, and the worrying effects of automation and staff churn. They discuss how small businesses, banks, gaming platforms, and everyday consumers all found themselves unable to process payments, take bookings, or even turn on a light due to a single regional fault. Mauven and Graham also examine the human side of outages — exhausted sysadmins, online threads that read like group therapy, and the blurred line between human operators and automated systems shipping production code. They mock the absurdity of smart devices that need the internet to perform basic functions, and contrast that with the resilience of simple, offline tech

Lesson from the AWS outage: don't buy beds that require internet. When the network drops, they apparently enter "sauna mode" or decide to become chairs. Critical infrastructure should fail gracefully, not into origami. https://lnkd.in/drSayGKb

🚨 When AWS sneezes, half the internet catches a cold! Last week, a major outage in AWS’s US-East-1 (N. Virginia) region temporarily disrupted parts of the internet, affecting apps like Snapchat, Perplexity, Amazon, Apple, Signal, Alexa, Fortnite, and even some AI tools like ChatGPT. 💡 What actually happened: An internal service dependency failure caused high error rates and latency across AWS services. Since US-East-1 is one of the backbone regions of AWS, even a small issue there ripples globally, impacting millions of requests per second. 🔥 Who felt the heat: Social media, fintech, gaming, and AI platforms all saw downtime or major slowdowns. If your monitoring dashboard looked like a Christmas tree yesterday… You weren’t alone. 😅 ⚙️ Recovery update: AWS quickly identified the root cause and began restoring services. ✅ As of now, most systems are fully operational, and recovery across affected workloads is complete. 🧠 The takeaway: This outage reminds us why multi-region and multi-cloud setups aren't just “nice-to-haves” anymore; they’re survival strategies. When one region fails, your system shouldn’t collapse… it should adapt. 💪☁️

When One Region Shakes the Internet: Lessons from the AWS Outage On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a 15-hour outage originating in its US-EAST-1 region (Northern Virginia). The root cause? A DNS resolution failure tied to DynamoDB API endpoints. What followed was a cascading impact across 113 AWS services, disrupting everything from Slack, Zoom, and Canva to Snapchat, Venmo, and Fortnite. Even Amazon’s own ecosystem—Alexa, Prime Video, Ring—wasn’t spared. The scale was staggering: 11M+ outage reports globally, with 2,500+ companies affected. Downdetector logged 9.8M connectivity issues, including 2.7M in the US. Analysts estimate financial losses in billions, with ripple effects across banking, healthcare, travel, and e-commerce. This wasn’t a cyberattack—it was an internal infrastructure fault. But the implications are profound: Concentration Risk: AWS controls ~38% of global cloud infrastructure. When one region falters, the blast radius is global. Resilience Matters: Many organizations still concentrate workloads in a single region. Multi-cloud and multi-region strategies aren’t optional—they’re survival tactics. As businesses, we need to ask: ✅ Are we architected for redundancy and failover? ✅ Do we have incident response playbooks beyond vendor SLAs? ✅ Are we prepared for the next outage—because it’s not a question of if, but when? #AWS #CloudComputing #DigitalInfrastructure #RiskManagement #BusinessContinuity

Procurement Implications of the AWS Outage (October 20, 2025) The 15-hour AWS outage in its US-EAST-1 region, which disrupted over 2,500 companies and affected more than 11 million users globally, highlights the procurement risks of heavy reliance on a single cloud provider. This event underscores the urgency of addressing concentration risk in digital infrastructure sourcing. Procurement must prioritize: - Diversification: Reducing single-region or single-vendor exposure in cloud and SaaS portfolios. - Resilience Clauses: Embedding redundancy, failover, and recovery time metrics in supplier agreements. - Business Continuity Alignment: Ensuring incident response and continuity planning extend beyond vendor SLAs. This outage demonstrates that vendor resilience is a procurement risk factor, not just a technical one. #Procurement #ITProcurement #CloudStrategy #RiskManagement #BusinessContinuity #SupplierDiversity #DigitalResilience #AWS #CloudComputing #CategoryManagement #VendorManagement

🚨 When the Cloud Stumbled, the Internet Froze! ☁️💻 . . On Monday, a massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage disrupted major parts of the internet — from banking apps and airlines to entertainment and communication platforms — highlighting how much of modern life runs on the cloud. ✅What caused the outage? The issue began in AWS’s US-East-1 data center (Virginia), one of its oldest and largest hubs. A technical update to the DynamoDB API — a core database service used to store user and app data — introduced an error that disrupted the Domain Name System (DNS). Since DNS acts like the internet’s phonebook, converting website names into IP addresses, the glitch meant apps and services couldn’t locate the servers they needed to operate. ✅Who was affected? The ripple effect was huge — 113 AWS services were impacted. Major apps like WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, Snapchat, Pinterest, Roblox, Apple Music, Canva, and Duolingo went offline or slowed down. Even financial platforms (like Venmo and Coinbase), airlines (Delta and United), and media outlets (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press) faced disruptions. Some users also reported issues with Alexa, Ring, and Kindle devices. ✅The Bigger Picture This outage is more than a technical hiccup — it’s a wake-up call. We’ve built a world where a single data center glitch can disrupt millions of lives — from ordering coffee to catching flights. #AWS #CloudComputing #TechNews #DigitalResilience #Innovation #SystemDesign #Outage #Infrastructure

The AWS outage is a reminder that “cloud-first” doesn’t mean “cloud-only.” Critical workloads should be architected with true fault domain separation, multi-homed across regions, providers, or hybrid footprints that can sustain a provider level event. Resilience isn’t just about uptime SLAs; it’s about designing for failure and removing single points of dependency. https://lnkd.in/e6r7sQxh