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US Amazon.com Website Down For Over 1 Hour

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the there-goes-the-bottom-line dept.

CorporalKlinger writes "CNET News is reporting that Amazon's US website, Amazon.com, has been unreachable since 10:30 AM PDT today. As of posting, visiting www.amazon.com produces an 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable' message. According to CNET, "Based on last quarter's revenue of $4.13 billion, a full-scale global outage would cost Amazon more than $31,000 per minute on average." Some of Amazon's international websites still appear to be working, and some pages on the US Amazon.com site load if accessed using HTTPS instead of HTTP."

10 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. So, it finally happened... by geekgirlandrea · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Believe me, if you've seen the code that runs that site, it's impressive it runs as well as it does. Try to imagine 900M static binaries that take almost an hour to link because of some tiny little code change, because they can't be fucked to make their deployment system deal with dynamic libraries reasonably.

    1. Re:So, it finally happened... by geekgirlandrea · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Um, I used to work there. Believe it or not, there are some people here with real jobs and stuff.

    2. Re:So, it finally happened... by pclminion · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Believe me, if you've seen the code that runs that site, it's impressive it runs as well as it does. Try to imagine 900M static binaries that take almost an hour to link because of some tiny little code change, because they can't be fucked to make their deployment system deal with dynamic libraries reasonably.

      Fuck up a dynamic library and you fuck everything. Fuck up one of those 900M programs and you've fucked 1/900M'th of everything.

      What does Amazon's back end compile for? If it's Linux, that's an issue right there. The GNU linker has pathological behavior when linking large numbers of static libraries. I work on a relatively small (~1 million line) codebase and it takes about ten minutes to link. Link it on another platform (e.g. Solaris) and it links in about five seconds.

      The problem isn't the huge number of libraries. The problem is that the linker blows.

    3. Re:So, it finally happened... by bark · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The post on the google blog had a reply from the person who did Gold (see the link to Gold a few posts back) had this to say:

      Ian Lance Taylor said...

      ralph: The main difference in gold is that it was designed from the ground up to work for ELF. The GNU linker was designed to work for a.out and COFF.

      ELF conceptually requires three passes over the object files, a.out and COFF require two. A version of the third pass was hacked into the GNU linker by using a backpatch system on the symbol table, in which the GNU linker makes some decisions when it first reads the object file, and then undoes those decisions when appropriate after seeing all the objects. The backpatching causes the GNU linker to traverse the symbol table multiple times; this is very expensive in a large link. Reducing the number of symbol table traversals is probably the most significant change.

      A couple of smaller but significant changes can be found on my blog:

      Multi-threading.

      C++ templates avoid byte swapping.

      April 7, 2008 9:03 AM

  2. Re:This will surely help by Goaway · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You think traffic from SlashDot would even be noticeable on Amazon's servers? You have some delusions of grandeur there.

  3. thinks I am a robot by hloo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    tried to access it from holland just now, got this message: We're sorry! You have been denied access to this feature because we believe you violated the terms, conditions, rules, guidelines or policies of our site in the past. If you believe we have taken this action in error, you may contact us at ad-help-us@amazon.com. We apologize for the inconvenience. Frequently Asked Questions Q: Why am I seeing this page? A: This page is usually shown when we believe that the request is coming from a robot or other automated source of requests. If you are not a robot please contact us immediately by emailing ad-help-us@amazon.com and we will reinstate your access to our website.

  4. AWS and EC2 by DrHanser · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A bit strange, the people wondering why this is news. Amazon provides the backend for a number of web services with their EC2 and AWS platforms. This is going to make third parties seriously consider whether or not they want to trust Amazon with their business.

    That is yet another reason why this is Real News(tm).

    --
    What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
  5. Get better Amazon, we love you! (T_T) by __aailob1448 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Amazon: A credit to Jeff Bezos. I love Amazon prime, I enjoy my Kindle, I like the prices and the one click purchases and the mp3 previews and the look inside the book and the no-bullshit mp3 store (which I don't use) and the useful reviews and the decent recommendations, etc ! Amazon almost never leaves a bad taste in my mouth and keeps innovating with features that are actually not RETARDED or HOSTILE to me! ZOMG!

    Amazon is as good as eBay-Paypal is evil. Both are outstanding products but one is loved and one is hated.

    Sooo...in the time that I wrote this post, Amazon lost enough money to sustain me my entire life. That's sad.

  6. Cost of outage by sugarmotor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a full-scale global outage would cost Amazon more than $31,000 per minute on average.
    I don't trust this; some people may buy later if there is an outage, no?

    Stephan

    --
    http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
  7. Re:This will surely help by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Slashdot still sends far more aggregate traffic to a site than digg. Think about it: How long are you on the Slashdot homepage, versus Digg? I've seen logs of both and Digg will generate a huge spike (more bandwith when it hits the front page than with Slashdot, indeed) but after an hour it's gone. Slashdot traffic lasts all day.