Amazon failure takes down sites across Internet

[Viva_La_Revolution]

Source: usa today

Scores of websites and Internet services like Foursquare and Reddit are down or have limited availability because of problems at a data center run by Amazon.com.

The problems reveal widespread reliance on Amazon Web Services, which rents out computers and data storage on a self-service basis over the Internet.

AWS is generally considered reliable because it uses vast numbers of computers, spread out in different data centers, making Thursday’s failure unusual.

Amazon says the trouble started early in the morning at a data center in Northern Virginia.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-04-21-amazon-outage.htm?dlvrit=206567

[Sherman A1]

1. This is known as an

oooops in tech talk.

[cbdo2007]

2. This is exactly why "cloud computing" is so risky.

No reputable business should put themselves in a situation where their operations are reliant on another this much.

Sure, it's one thing to have a web hosting company but it's nice to have our own backup and operations here in our office so that we can switch over to another company quickly if we need to.

[Bosonic]

3. Depends how physically distributed the cloud is

and if they allow redundancy within it. If both these conditions are met, then a cloud should be quite resilient (think of it as an internet version of a RAID disc)

[Recursion]

4. I hate RAID

I've had more problems with RAID controllers breaking than I ever have with disks failing.

[bemildred]

5. Needless complexity, a brittle attempt at robustness, a non-solution to a non-problem, yes.

That was my experience too, required constant intervention. But a great marketing strategy for disk manufacturers.

[Recursion]

6. Now that I have an IT budget...

...I always just say "tell me how much you were going to spend on RAID. Spend 2/3 of that on a more robust backup/restore solution."

[Dappleganger]

7. Reddit is still down.

This is pretty serious.