Copyright NBC 5 Chicago
Thousands of websites and apps like Snapchat, Roblox, Ring and more were down or experiencing issues Monday morning as a major cloud computing service went offline. The errors began just after 12 a.m., when Amazon Web Services said it was "investigating increased error rates and latencies" for multiple sites. But what is AWS, which sites were down and how long could it take to fix the problem? Here's what to know: What is AWS? Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing service. "Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services," its website stated. Local What happened to AWS? According to NBC News, the problem stems from an error with DynamoDB, a system for managing database tables and indexes, AWS said. Which websites were down? The issue impacted thousands of websites and apps across the globe. The website DownDetector showed users reporting issues with Reddit, Snapchat, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite, Amazon, Starbucks, Facebook and more. Coinbase, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, said its services was unavailable because of the AWS outage. Customers of the service also couldn't report the issues because the service's automated support ticking system was also offline. When might it get fixed? At 4:27 a.m. CT the AWS Health Dashboard said there were "significant signs of recovery. By 6:08 a.m., the company was "continuing to work towards full recovery for EC2 launch errors." Another update was expected by 7 a.m.
