The question is not if there will be another AWS outage, but when and how the next one will catch us

Yesterday there was a fall in Amazon Web Services infrastructure which affected a multitude of services. Many AI tools did not work, nor did games like Fortnite or Roblox, streaming platforms, applications and much more. Additionally, at the same time there was a failure in the Redsys system (according to the company, unrelated) that left all payment services in Spain out of play. It’s not the first time this has happened and it doesn’t look like it will be the last. How can we prepare? Amazon falls. The failure occurred around 9 a.m. (Spanish time) at the AWS data center in Northern Virginia and caused a global butterfly effect. The DownDetector home screen showed a Dantesque panorama; Dozens of well-known services were experiencing downtime around the world. AWS reacted quickly and a couple of hours later they were already up and running their systems. And Redsys. Around 11 in the morning, the dataphones, Bizum payments and even the ATMs also began to fail. At first we attributed it to the AWS failure, but according to Redsys it had nothing to do with the Amazon Web Services failure. Regardless of whether it was a coincidence or not, for a few hours many people were left without access to their money and Redsys is the main payment service provider in Spain and one of the most important worldwide. Cash. In the case of failure of ATMs and dataphones, the solution is obvious: carry cash for what may happen, a habit that many of us do not have. In addition, it is also advisable not to keep all the money in the same bank, for example having a savings account separate from the rest for emergencies. Yesterday wouldn’t have been of much use, but if only our regular bank’s system had failed, we could access the other one. Diversify. As with money, it is not advisable to put all your eggs in the same basket in the case of the apps and services we use. The biggest problem may be if one of these outages affects communication services as happened with WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook in 2021. In this case, it is best to have an account in other apps through which we can stay in touch. In fact, that time Telegram was the big winneradding no less than 70 million users. Dependence. The fall of Amazon Web Services is an example of the enormous dependence on the cloud, a sector in which Amazon is the undisputed leader with a 31% market share. It is followed by Microsoft Azure with 20%, Google Cloud with 12% and Alibaba Cloud with 4%. The pie is shared among very few companies and, if one fails, the impact is very great. It’s happened before. In September 2015, Amazon Web Services suffered another “blackout”” that affected many services such as Netflix, Reddit, Medium, Tinder and more. Already then the enormous dependence on Amazon’s cloud was evident and what happened yesterday makes it clear that the situation remains the same and even worse. Redsys also experienced a drop two years ago it affected bank payment systems. The dataphones, some ATMs and other services such as Bizum did not work. The situation was quite similar to what occurred yesterday. There have been more cases, such as last year’s Crowdstrike crash. Microsoft’s cloud-based cybersecurity platform knocked out the systems of airports, hospitals, and many more companies. And it will happen again. Fortunately it is not common, but errors of this type they happen all the time. The problem is when they occur in such large infrastructures on which so many services depend. Yesterday’s error on AWS occurred in the service that is responsible for distributing traffic among its servers, but also may come from other causes such as faulty updates or incompatibilities. Image | Markus Spiske, Pexels In Xataka | Red Eléctrica still has not stabilized the voltage half a year after the blackout. It is not a technical failure, it is a geographical mismatch

An outage in AWS is causing a multitude of services to fail. It is the condemnation of the cloud

If at this time you have noticed that “the internet is not working well”, you are not alone. The problem seems to be caused by the problems that one of Amazon’s large data centers is suffering. Its cloud infrastructure, AWS (Amazon Web Services), is what allows a multitude of platforms to function on the Internet, but if that infrastructure goes down, so do these services. Amazon reports the fall. The website itself that monitors the status of AWS services precisely indicates how there is a “multi-service operational problem in Northern Virginia.” There they point out that multiple services are “Disrupted” and note that they have seen an “Increase in error rates and latencies in several AWS services in the US-EAST-1 region.” Is your Alexa not working for you? Among the affected services is, for example, Amazon Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant. Some of the members of the Xataka team have noticed, for example, how their Echo was not working correctly, and this is one of the consequences of the fall. Duolingo, Canva, Perplexity… Among those affected are those platforms, but also many others such as Roblox, the aforementioned Amazon Alexa, Amazon’s own e-commerce sites, Fortnite, The New York Times, Apple TV, McDonalds or Life360 are suffering falls. according to DownDetector. Some of those platforms, like Canva, 3 that are explicitly suffering from problems. They are working on it. The fall was detected at 9:11 in the morning, Madrid time, and 40 minutes later this increase in errors was confirmed. Amazon indicates that they are working to mitigate the problem and understand the causes, and will provide a new update around 10:30. In development…

The future of the European cloud is being written in Aragon. AWS has made him his most ambitious bastion in Spain

What until now was an ambitious announcement has just become a reality. The Aragon government has published in its official bulletin the approval of the General Plan of Interest of Aragon (Piga) that will allow Amazon Web Services (AWS) expand your infrastructure in the region. This is a project presented in May last year that contemplates an investment of 15.7 billion euros and that comes with the promise of promoting thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect. The process has been resolved in just 15 months, an unusually brief period for these types of procedures, and that places the American multinational in a position to immediately start the works in the municipalities where it already has a presence and in others in which it will be installed for the first time. We do not talk about a starting point, but of an extension: Amazon already operates three centers in Aragon And now he plans to lift five more. The Aragonese bet to become a strategic cloud enclave The key that this advance has promoted is in the Pigawhich acts as a fast route for large -draft initiatives. The regional government declared AWS’s expansion in 2024 INVESTMENT OF AUTONOMIC AND GENERAL INTERESTwhich opened the door to a preferential process. In the social network XThe Executive highlighted the publication in the BOA and the words of the counselor Octavio López, who valued the fifteen months that the entire process lasted. Click on the image to see the original publication in x As we indicated above, the planned investment amounts to 15.7 billion euros. It is the greatest technological operation approved in Aragon and one of the most ambitious in Spain. The regional government emphasizes that this figure reflects not only the size of the works, but also Amazon’s commitment to consolidate its presence in the region. The execution, of course, will be progressive, with an estimated temporary horizon of ten years. The plan contemplates a remarkable scale jump: of the three existing campuses It will be passed to a total of eight locations in Aragon. These will be located in Villanueva de Gállego, Huesca, Ebro Burgo, Zaragoza-La Cartuja and Sotonera. Each campus will integrate not only data centers, but also auxiliary facilities necessary for its operation. The plan foresees new access roads, fiber optic and High voltage lines for campus. In water matters, specific conduits for process water and evacuation networks will be enabled. Data centers are the machinery that supports digital life. There photos, videos and documents are stored, processes that work the social networks are executed and transactions that move the economy are managed. Every time you see a series in streaming, you participate in a video call or make an online payment, there are servers by processing the information in the background. Companies such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon operate this type of infrastructure. In Aragon, the extension corresponds to AWS. All the site planned in Aragon will be interconnected by fiber optics and managed as a single unit. In the company’s jargon it is called the AWS region, in this case identified as AWS Europe (Spain). The model is based on dividing the region into several areas of availability, so if one suffers an incidence, the others maintain the service. The extension ensures more capacity, lower latency and greater resilience for customers who use services in the Peninsula. Official documents stand out that campus will be equipped with redundant energy, cooling and communications systems. This means that, although a component fails, the service remains active. Fire detection measures, water leak control and operational continuity protocols are also included. In parallel, the plan incorporates energy efficiency and water management commitments, with infrastructure designed to optimize consumption. The goal is to sustain growth that combines technological capacity and environmental sustainability. Not everything is lights along the way. As the country collectedAt the end of 2024 Amazon requested to expand in a 48% water availability for its three complexes already active in Aragon. The petition ignited the alarms of groups as environmental environment and your platform your cloud dry my river, which question the water impact of this type of facilities. In their allegations they recalled that climate change should already have been considered and that, in full structural drought, what corresponds is to limit consumption. The Aragon government presents this extension as part of its strategy to attract technological investment and reinforce the role of the community on the European digital map. In the official communication it is noted that projects of this scale allow diversifying the economy and modernizing key infrastructure. Beyond the numbers, the institutional message aims to consolidate Aragon as a cloud reference enclave. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | İsmail Enes Ayhan In Xataka | Spain is becoming an authentic mecca of data centers. Uruguay has some lessons about it

Azure is being for the AWS was for the Internet

Microsoft has made history by joining Nvidia in the exclusive club of the four billion dollars after Spectacular results that demonstrate how their commitment to the cloud and AI has completely transformed the company. Why is it important. Satya’s decision to reposition Microsoft as a company “Cloud First“A decade ago it has turned out to be one of the most successful strategic bets in technological history. Long before The arrival of chatgptMicrosoft decided to focus on building the infrastructure that would feed the AI revolution. In figures. The numbers of the latest quarterly results published are overwhelming: 76.4 billion dollars in quarterly income (+18%). Net profit of 27.2 billion (+24%). Azure exceeding 75,000 million annually with a growth of 34%. These figures fired the company’s action in the After-Hourswhich has catapulted the stock market capitalization above the four billion. The context. During the Ballmer era, Microsoft seemed condemned to be a desk for desktop software. Windows kept dominating, but the future pointed to the mobile and cloud. Nadella’s arrival changed priorities: less Windows, more digital infrastructure. His alliance with Openai in 2019 It ended up being visionary, since he assured access to the most advanced models without astronomical development costs. The alarm signal. Microsoft plans to spend 120,000 million dollars annually in data centers, quadruplying the investment of 2023. The financial director, Amy Hood, has confirmed that “the demand continues to exceed the supply” and that all this expense is “directly linked to contracts already signed.” It is the most expensive arms race in the history of technology. Yes, but. Success generates new problems to solve. The relationship with Openai has been tensioned and Microsoft has diversifying towards models of Grok and calls not to have all the eggs in the same basket. Copilot makes Microsoft continue to dominate in the business market with its 100 million users, but it is still far behind Chatgpt or Gemini, who multiply their adoption. And the winner is … Nadella has shown that deep business transformations are possible. From a Microsoft anchored in software licenses to a digital infrastructure power that competes from you to you with Amazon Web Services. Azure has not only grown: it has become the backbone of the AI era, processing the most demanding workloads of the planet. Script turn. For the first time in its history, Microsoft has publicly revealed the specific income of Azure and not only the accumulated of its division. Thus breaks years of opacity that Even former Steve Ballmer had criticized. Transparency comes just when the division has become its main growth engine and the most valuable asset of the company. In Xataka | Microsoft is in benefits records and also in dropout records. Satya Nadella explained this paradox Outstanding image | Microsoft, Xataka

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