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Amazon Web Meltdown

By | June 29, 2010, 2:19pm PDT

Summary: At approximately 4PM EST, June 29 2010, Amazon’s web services for purchasing items using browsers, the Kindle and iPad/iPhone/Android mobile web apps collapsed.

At approximately 4PM EST, June 29 2010, Amazon’s web services for purchasing items using browsers, the Kindle and iPad/iPhone/Android mobile web apps  collapsed.

This afternoon, I realized that I needed a new 72mm filter for a camera lens I had ordered from Amazon earlier in the day.

I put in the search parameters “72mm filter” and results came up, but whenever I tried to click on them, I would see the above 404 screen in either the Chrome or Firefox browsers. Thinking that perhaps my desktop PC was at fault, I attempted a similar purchase on the iPad.

This yielded an error message from the Amazon.com app, indicating that mobile web services were down.

Just to make sure I wasn’t completely crazy, I also tried to purchase e-Books via the Kindle store using the iPad Kindle app, and got the above completely blank Kindle Store home screen.

I was able to successfully search for an author “bourdain” but if you attempt to click on any of the books, they have no links.

[EDIT: Services resumed at approximately 8:30PM EST, for a total outage of approximately four and a half hours.]

As far as I know this is the first major systems failure of Amazon.com that I have seen in a very long time. Is anyone else having problems today? Talk back and let me know.

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Topics

Web, Amazon.com Inc., Channel Management, Cloud Computing, Web Services, Marketing, Enterprise Software, Software, Jason Perlow

Jason Perlow, Sr. Technology Editor at ZDNet, is a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies.

Disclosure

Jason Perlow

My Full-Time Employer is IBM. I write as a freelancer for ZDNet.

Disclaimer: The postings and opinions on this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

I own no investments or direct financial instruments in the companies I write about.

Biography

Jason Perlow

Jason Perlow, Sr. Technology Editor at ZDNet is a technologist with over two decades of experience with integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies. A long-time computer enthusiast starting the age of 13 with his first Apple ][ personal computer, he began his freelance writing career starting at ZD Sm@rt Reseller in 1996 and has since authored numerous guest columns for ZDNet Enterprise and Ziff-Davis Internet. Jason was previously Senior Technology Editor for Linux Magazine, where he wrote about Open Source issues from 1999 to 2008.

In his spare time, Jason is an avid amateur chef and food writer, where his work reviewing New Jersey restaurants has appeared in The New York Times. He is also the founder of the popular food web site eGullet and blogs about restaurants and cooking at OffTheBroiler.com.

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It's The SIZE of the System, That's All...
tech727 30th Jun 2010
Amazon is one HUGE mutherfletchin' web system with server nodules all over the USA, and they rarely if ever have a big glitch like they did yesterday. However when they do have a problem it's gigantic and the proportions affect hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously, from their web people to their employees to the public at large, as they try and complete orders or browsing, whatever was going on when it happened.

To cast blame on the OS, the servers, the structure, the system itself is completely stupid, as this sort of thing can happen for any number of reasons, and its affects can sustain hours and hours of difficulties for the whole infrastructure. I don't know who is worse, the stone or the thrower, but they both do damage to windows (no pun intended) so let's not jump the gun until the full reports are in because all your comments are pure speculation.

Amazon is the world's largest web enterprise no doubt, I mean I cannot think of any larger entity other than the government itself (any government), ie it's a universal system that everyone assumes will be functioning without fail, and when it does not it is noticed.
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Aren't they in the process of moving the site to AWS?
Dietrich T. Schmitz, ~ Your Linux Advocate 29th Jun 2010
nt
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
wackoae 29th Jun 2010
@Dietrich It is actually AWM (Amazon Web Meltdown). happy
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
Loverock Davidson 29th Jun 2010
What OS do they run on their servers? Yep, that is why it failed. LOL!
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
betelgeuse68 29th Jun 2010
@Loverock Davidson Imagine you hit a board with a couple of nails that's sitting on the road while you are out driving and your tire blows out. But then you decide to blame the maker of your car. That's the logic you're using.

It could be anything from power issues in data centers, failed networking equipment, mistakes in updating routing tables in networking gear, etc., etc. All of which bubbles up to impact your customers.

More to the point, you have no idea of the scope of what it's like to work at Google, Microsoft and/or Amazon - whereas I've worked for 2 out of 3 of them. Suffice to say, it has nothing to do with the OS.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
Loverock Davidson 29th Jun 2010
@betelgeuse68
Your logic is dumb. Quite simply the OS failed, its up to you to accept it. The quicker you do the better you will feel.
  • Flagged
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
anothercanuck 29th Jun 2010
Yes it was the OS: Windows. All their desktop windows systems, despite being patched with up to date security software, were all hit same the mailer trojan and the incredibly high volume of spam flowing from their Windows system has killed their internet connections.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
anothercanuck 29th Jun 2010
Really, I have no idea what failed, and neither does LD. I just wanted to show how easy it is to point fingers.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
x0prahWinfr3yx 30th Jun 2010
@Loverock Davidson

Pretty sure that Amazon servers run on Solaris. What a ridiculous suggestion, though. Blame the OS?
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
B.O.F.H. 30th Jun 2010
@Loverock Davidson
This was an application failure and not an OS failure. An IT professional would know that, so much for your claim of being such.
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Still broke.
MoeFugger Updated - 29th Jun 2010
Still broke at 1759 eastern time.
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Still broke
MoeFugger Updated - 29th Jun 2010
n
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
lee@... 29th Jun 2010
Assume break down was June 29th, not July 29th? happy
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Yep
MC_z 29th Jun 2010
All of my wish lists show "Item not Available". Can't get to forums, can't see much of my own profile information.

Don't know if it's related, but I had some problems with my ISP (Earthlink) this morning. Could get to some websites and couldn't get to others. It felt more like a DNS problem than anything else. Earthlink said their problem was in Denver, but I have no more details.

Wonder if the bad guys are digging around.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
bbatt 29th Jun 2010
Thought it was just a fluke when I got that message earlier today looking for a certain book. Just received the same message when trying to find another product. They are definitely having issues today!
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
babyboomer57 29th Jun 2010
Working fine at 8PM eastern time.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
MC_z 29th Jun 2010
Still busted here at 6:12 Mountain Time.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
JustJss 30th Jun 2010
I thought my book had gone out of print prematurely. WTF, they're too disconnected from their customers to let them know what's going on
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
stardreamer 30th Jun 2010
All of Intuit's (QuickBooks) web services were down for several days a couple of weeks ago and Sage's (Peachtree) services were down in the beginning of July. I'm starting to see a pattern here. Anyone else? Conspiracies abound!
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Any follow-up on what actually happened?
happyharry_z 30th Jun 2010
It might be a good opportunity for a lessons-learned article.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
tkepner 30th Jun 2010
Don't know if it's a melt-down, but, as a publisher, I have a consistent problem with Amazon not displaying my books in their search engine. For example, type in "Andrew Lang Blue Fairy Book" and while you get a list of 200 hits, none are my book. Add "Flying Chipmunk" to the search ("Andrew Lang Blue Fairy Book Flying Chipmunk") and NOW my book appears! And this happens with all 12 of my Andrew Lang Fairy Books. What's up with that?
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
Finell 30th Jun 2010
@tkepner Instead of asking all of us, who have no idea, why not contact Amazon.com and ask the reason or express your dissatisfaction?
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
eboyhan@... 30th Jun 2010
Over at the Amazon community boards (which were largely unusable during the outage), it was remarked that it appeared Amazon was attempting to update some features on the site -- at least it was noticed that some displays appeared to be different after the outage. Whether this was the putative cause, or the updates had been made earlier (and just not noticed) I couldn't say.

It appears that in the kindle store more info as to device/app edition compatibility is provided on the book detail page, and that perhaps more price info is provided on wishlists.
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RE: Amazon Web Meltdown
Finell 30th Jun 2010
In my opinion, this is a dopey post for someone who holds himself out as a tech blogger: it is a waste of space and readers' time. And all the speculation you invited about what happened and why, by people who have no idea, wasted more of everyone's time. If you can't determine by yourself (and perhaps by contacting colleagues for confirmation) whether the problem was just yours, or was a system-wide outage, you should be reading this blog, not writing it. Instead asking your readers about it, did you consider contacting Amazon support by phone or email? We don't really need to know the details of what you tried to buy or why, and the screen shots and other text to convince us of what happened to you should be unnecessary; we should be able to rely on you to know what you are talking about (although this post causes me to doubt that). Yes, it is surprising that Amazon.com would be down for a few hours, although we all know that stuff happens, so a post of 2 or 3 sentences noting the outage--after checking out the facts with Amazon--would have been responsible reporting. But the sky isn't falling.
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It's The SIZE of the System, That's All...
tech727 30th Jun 2010
Amazon is one HUGE mutherfletchin' web system with server nodules all over the USA, and they rarely if ever have a big glitch like they did yesterday. However when they do have a problem it's gigantic and the proportions affect hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously, from their web people to their employees to the public at large, as they try and complete orders or browsing, whatever was going on when it happened.

To cast blame on the OS, the servers, the structure, the system itself is completely stupid, as this sort of thing can happen for any number of reasons, and its affects can sustain hours and hours of difficulties for the whole infrastructure. I don't know who is worse, the stone or the thrower, but they both do damage to windows (no pun intended) so let's not jump the gun until the full reports are in because all your comments are pure speculation.

Amazon is the world's largest web enterprise no doubt, I mean I cannot think of any larger entity other than the government itself (any government), ie it's a universal system that everyone assumes will be functioning without fail, and when it does not it is noticed.

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