Amazon Power Failure knocks out QRZ for 12 hours

So what you're really saying is the clouds took out the cloud?

 

Seems a few things happened at Amazon - they only lost power for about 30 minutes, and during that 30 minute period, they couldn't get the backup power working. Once back up, it took many hours to get everything reset and back to where it should be (operational).

This has to be a major blow to Amazon. This can't be blamed on a force majeure - along the line they chose to have a single location (or allow some sites to be hosted only at that single location) and didn't get the "UPS" part right. I get that a datacenter involves HUGE gobs of power...but the battery and generator companies will always make more... they just didn't have enough or get it right.

At least, that's the story for now. Time will tell more.

Frankly, I wondered if this was a "falling dominoes" effect, where Amazon wasn't entirely to blame, but where UUnet might have also been down or some of the key nodes were down, maybe 'stranding' the Amazon data center somehow. But it doesn't intially seem like it was that complicated, just Amazon not getting it right.

Folks, you'd be surprised the great lengths companies go to for redundancy and uptime. I worked for a company that simply sold stuff ...and as they sought a new building for their sales staff, one of the requirements was the ability to run a redundant T1 line up another part of the building, like an elevator shaft away from the other t1. The logic was simple - if 1/2 the building was destroyed, they wanted the other 1/2 to keep selling... and were willing to pay dearly for that, both in rent and installation charges.

 

I'm relatively new to ham radio. I have been back playing with radio's for about a year. One of the things that drives the enthusiasm is this site the ability to look up who you have spoken to is great and some of the countries and places are beautiful. I missed you when you were down but I'm glad your back thanks for the site its a valuable resource.
cheers
steve
vk3meg

 

To add more...There was a little bit of a falling dominoes effect as Amazon does have 2 other datacenters in other places in the US (CA and OR), but the communication between them failed. But why the complete outage at the Ashburn location? Datacenters routinely have plenty of backup power.

I might let them off the hook if lightning destroyed their backup power system. Because, well, we all know that lightning is random and simply ruins stuff, and there's nothing you can do to protect against lightning

Bezos will either have to do a lot of selling, or a lot of discounting...maybe both...if he'll keep customers.

 

No ordinary storm, Fairfax County reports as of 11PM Saturday: "Of 394,000 Fairfax customers, 199,397 Dominion customers and 1,128 NOVEC customers are [still] without power."

Some big trees down in our neighborhood and roads near streams closed due to flooding. We are very fortunate to have power and internet though our landline phone is out of service. The local 911 center was disabled for several hours. Not sure if any local amateur groups were mobilized as we were away for most of the day.

 

Every time grounding and lightning comes up, there are a few here who will claim, "But if you do it right, you have nothing to worry about!" If a company with millions of bucks can't get it right, what is the simple ham to do?

It strikes me that the only thing that "cloud" computing does is make sure that when everything else fails, you're done. The idea that "cloud" computing somehow protects you against power outages and catastrophic failure strikes me as absurd.

I personally will never store ANYTHING on someone else's computer. NO one care's about my stuff more than me. Besides, no one will bother to hack my computer, but the one that stores everyone else's stuff, be sure that one WILL get hacked.

 

It was a line of storms that brought with it a Derecho. A common occurrence here in the Midwest.... http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDerechos/derechofacts.htm

 

I agree that there may be no "perfect" protection but there's at least the chance that Amazon either skimped on their backup system or simply didn't do it right. They could have trillions of bucks and it wouldn't have helped them when the S hit the fan.

Yes, I suppose, but...you already store things on other's computers, you've likely been "hacked" (or compromised in some way) and hacking's not your biggest data risk anyway.

I won't go too deep into it as I won't be changing your mind but it is a statistical model, not a black-and-white. And there's nothing wrong with storing your data only on the harddrive in your house - you just have a better chance of losing it that way. Yes, Amazon went down for a bit but there's no evidence of compromise or loss.

 

If they don't have the incentive to do it correctly, who does? Why would they skimp? Are they just in it for the money? OH NO!!!

Don't disagree there.

Have you tried to buy anything with cash lately? Often, you are asked, "phone number? Address??" I was in Radio Shack a couple of years ago and the fellow demanded I give him my phone number and address in order to buy something. I was buying with cash and refused and he nearly blew a gasket when I wouldn't give him my personal info.

Daily we read about databases of this type of information hacked into . . .

It's NOT good!

...........Bob

 

Good job Fred and thank's agn 73 Glenn

 

I used to give them the number dedicated to my dial-up modem, and then "56K8N1", and then wait for their WTH look. Now that I no longer have that phone line, I give them random made-up info. They're happy and, (more importantly) I'm happy.

 

I didn't know what to do with myself, nothing to read, no forums, nada...complete withdrawal...a QRZ junkie!

 

I was at work all night and never realized there was an outage. Oh well.

 

And here I was thinking the site simply crashed from the (possible over)load of people taking the Extra practice exams last night, since today was the last day for the old question pool... and, yes, I was one of those who took my test today.

Tony
KA5TRO /AE

 

Well done for getting QRZ back on line. What a strange summer we are having weather-wise !

F5VID