Amazon Web Services Knocked Offline by Storms
By NICK BILTON JUNE 30, 2012
People who tried to watch Netflix on Friday evening saw nothing but red. Instagram users couldn't upload or view photos. And a number of other Web sites and services were knocked offline. Storms had disrupted Amazon Web Services, which stores vast amounts of data for companies worldwide.
The problems first began around 11 p.m., when a roiling storm caused numerous electrical failures on the East Coast that left two million people without power and at least six people dead.
Late Friday, on the company's status blog, Amazon said it was "investigating elevated error rates impacting a limited number" of customers. The company noted that the failure had happened at a server facility in Virginia and it was because of the lighting storm in the area.
While Amazon continued to update its status blog, information on the troubles remained relatively sparse throughout the evening.
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