Live data from Hacker News

Amazon was Down

amazon.com

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Amazon was Down

#41

At an estimated loss of $31,000 per minute http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.to... I'm blown away that I see Amazon goes down so often. That certainly, in my mind, doesn't bode well for the brand of AWS.

$31K in '08. What is it today?

Re: Amazon was Down

#43

At an estimated loss of $31,000 per minute http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.to... I'm blown away that I see Amazon goes down so often. That certainly, in my mind, doesn't bode well for the brand of AWS.

Does Amazon really go down that often? Is there any data how often/ for how long Amazon does go down? I wonder how it compares to other sites that get the same amount of traffic.

I think it's the second time this year - http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/31/technology/amazon-down/index...

Re: Amazon was Down

#44
A while ago, someone claiming to have worked at Amazon said that downtime doesn't really affect things as much as you'd think. He said most people simply just come back later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147461

[Edit: That being said, there's also the statistic that every 100ms of latency costs Amazon 1%. Imagine what 20+ minutes of "latency" would do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273900]

Re: Amazon was Down

#45
post #29

It's a lesson in overengineering. At this point my $5 Pentium 3 server has a greater uptime than Amazon.

Your $5 Pentium 3 server isn't the largest retail website on the internet making $61 billion a year.

Having seen a lot of the code that Amazon runs on, and having seen first-hand the scale that it runs on, I'll say this: it's not perfect, but it's remarkably well-engineered, and a hell of a lot better than most snarky HNers could do.

Re: Amazon was Down

#46

At an estimated loss of $31,000 per minute http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.to... I'm blown away that I see Amazon goes down so often. That certainly, in my mind, doesn't bode well for the brand of AWS.

Does Amazon really go down that often? Is there any data how often/ for how long Amazon does go down? I wonder how it compares to other sites that get the same amount of traffic.

It probably doesn't, but you notice every time it does.

It went down once in the last couple weeks as well, if I remember right.

Re: Amazon was Down

#47

At an estimated loss of $31,000 per minute http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.to... I'm blown away that I see Amazon goes down so often. That certainly, in my mind, doesn't bode well for the brand of AWS.

I can't imagine that's a real loss, likely only deferred sales. What are you going to do if you can't buy your thing at Amazon? Drive somewhere? I think you'll try again later.

Dividing income for time doesn't necessarily give you loss, especially this seems to have no weighting for time of day and season. I doubt an outage right now has anywhere near the same effect it would have during lunch break two weeks before Christmas.

Re: Amazon was Down

#48
post #29

It's a lesson in overengineering. At this point my $5 Pentium 3 server has a greater uptime than Amazon.

Is that the sound of the power supply going on your Pentium 3...

...or your internet connection

You never patch or reboot your magic box either?

Re: Amazon was Down

#50
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Amazon not run their website on AWS? I assumed (incorrectly, apparently) that AWS was originally built to allow Amazon to scale their own services. Is it really a separate product that they don't use themselves?

AFAIK the "Amazon runs on AWS" meme was originally a line of pure marketing tripe.

Incorrect, Amazon.com runs on AWS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5588012
Post reply on HN