Amazon Web Services US-east-1 outage takes down Ring, Roomba

When Amazon’s huge servers stopped working in one region it wasn’t just a problem for IT workers. Some people couldn’t vacuum their house.

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered an outage in the US on Thursday, owners of their smart devices like doorbells and vacuums got an unwelcome surprise — their appliances stopped working.

The Amazon Web Services US-East-1 region began experiencing “severely impaired” service on Thursday.

The servers in that region are Amazon’s oldest, stemming back to when the company first began offering cloud computing services in 2006.

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The AWS service health dashboard during the outage.

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Since then, its cloud computing service Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become the world’s biggest provider, and brought in $US3.5 billion ($A4.7 billion) in profits last quarter – 57 per cent of Amazon’s total.

Many companies and services rely on AWS so it’s a big deal when there is an outage and this time it wasn’t just IT workers who felt the impact with people’s home comforts also affected.

Was hoping us-east-1 would be fixed by sundown. I can't turn my lights on...

— Matt Auerbach (@mauerbac) November 25, 2020

I... can't vacuum... because us-east-1 is down.

— Geoff Belknap (@geoffbelknap) November 25, 2020

Some part of AWS is down and apparently it’s screwing up the Roomba.

— Matthew Green (@matthew_d_green) November 25, 2020

An Amazon AWS outage is currently impacting our iRobot Home App. Please know that our team is aware and monitoring the situation and hope to get the App back online soon. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

— iRobot (@iRobot) November 25, 2020

Anyone else experiencing issues with @ring? Not sure if it’s the app. Doorbells are fully charged, WiFi is working great, but these doorbells are not working. #ring #RingDoorbell

— Cass👽🛰 (@schmassidy) November 25, 2020

In a foul-mouthed tweet we can’t show for reasons of decency, another user reported their “doorbell doesn’t work” because of the outage.

Amazon-owned Ring confirmed it was having issues.

We are aware of a service interruption impacting Ring. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding. Please check for updates here: https://t.co/eIn9C666kV.

— Ring (@ring) November 25, 2020

The outage prevented Amazon from updating its own Service Health Dashboard that provides information on the status of its servers.

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, reported its publishing systems were “hobbled” by the outage, which also affected other news outlets including The Wall Street Journal and The Chicago Tribune.

Around 11pm on Thursday night, the company announced the problems were solved, saying it had “identified the root cause” and “completed immediate actions to prevent recurrence”.