AWS S3 Outage Brings Out Best of Twitter

The internet has plenty of amazing things to offer, and as someone old enough to remember a time when it was not as accessible, I’m appreciative of it every day.

However, of all the incredible options you have online, one of my favorite things to do is go on Twitter. Sure, Twitter is far from perfect. It hasn’t really figured out how to turn a profit, and there is that whole “Twitter troll” issue. But putting those problems aside, I still find Twitter to be a pretty fun place that's always good for a laugh. 

That especially rings true when something big happens. The outage Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) suffered in the US-EAST-1 Region was the most recent example, as many folks impacted by the service disruption took to Twitter to let their voices be heard.

As you can imagine, Twitter’s reaction to the AWS S3 outage did not disappoint. I’ve compiled some of my favorite tweets below. Enjoy.

Editor’s note: I understand the outage did take place over a week ago. The reason I didn’t do this last week is because my focus was on the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read my feature on the process around selecting the plan processor for the CAT, which is currently free to view for a limited time.

According to Amazon, the human error that caused the service disruption occurred at 12:37 p.m. EST. It didn’t take long for Twitter to take notice and predict the ensuing disaster.

Time to discover how much of the internet is reliant on S3 #awsoutage #s3outage

— mason (@r4v5) February 28, 2017

It quickly became clear that things were not going smoothly for those impacted by the outage.

TFW you realize that half your infrastructure relies on S3. Including your maintenance page. #awsoutage pic.twitter.com/j8QC297QJN

— Travis Soule (@TravSoule) February 28, 2017

And people looking to figure out a solution to their problems came to realize how far-reaching the outage was.

"Hey @Quora, what happens when Amazon S3 goes down?" Oh... #awsoutage pic.twitter.com/tXqwGViIxx

— John Sandall (@John_Sandall) February 28, 2017

In fact, those responsible for keeping tabs on whether websites were up and running were having their own issues.

it doesn't get more #meta than https://t.co/4afRePP0bP being down because of the #awsoutage pic.twitter.com/nMFRr270Lw

— Nick Bowersox (@zeerow) February 28, 2017

With some handling the news better than others.

sorry all. current #AWSdown brought down https://t.co/XYZ5iegXtd. We're curled up on the floor in a fetal position until its over pic.twitter.com/lErFYzvX5m

— DownDetector (@downdetector) February 28, 2017

As is the case with every big moment on Twitter, a meme from “The Simpsons” had to be incorporated…

Today on Twitter #awsdown #awsoutage #aws #s3 pic.twitter.com/IfV5Qa5WM5

— Max Keller (@langer_hans) February 28, 2017

…followed shortly by one from “The Office."

A lot of offices right now due to the #AWSOutage ...#AWS #AWSOutage pic.twitter.com/VpuQD44AZ9

— Lume (@BigLume) February 28, 2017

And people couldn’t resist having President Trump get in on the fun.

Wrong! There are no issues with AWS. Fake News! #awsoutage pic.twitter.com/dSGMhejyXg

— Zach Hintze (@zhintze) February 28, 2017

The AWS S3 outage also led to some shocking revelations.

So, if there are no servers... why are the servers down? :O #serverless #aws #awsoutage pic.twitter.com/P6esij7yLr

— khaxan (@khaxan) February 28, 2017

And as is always the case, one firm’s disaster is another’s victory.

Data centers with IBM #PowerSystems are cool right now, just sayin'. ? #awsoutage https://t.co/f9a3kkMtxc

— IBMPowerSystems (@IBMPowerSystems) February 28, 2017

Microsoft Azure's sales team tomorrow. #awsdown pic.twitter.com/y0yu5g9sdS

— Shiv (@shivkanthb) February 28, 2017