App Store, Apple Music, iCloud & other Apple services impacted by Amazon outage [u]
A variety of Apple cloud services experienced outages and slowdowns on Tuesday in what appeared to be a major issue with Amazon Web Services, which hosts some of the biggest online companies in the U.S.
The issue is affecting some users of Apple Music, the Apple TV, and the Mac and iOS App Stores, plus a number of iCloud services including Notes, backup, web apps, and iCloud Drive, according to Apple's system status page. People may also be seeing trouble with iTunes, iBooks, and/or cloud-based Photos functions.
Problems began shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern time and are still ongoing.
While Apple hasn't acknowledged the source of the glitches, Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service) is currently experiencing "availibility issues" on the U.S. east coast, leading to problems for dependent companies. Apple is known to rely on Amazon for portions of its cloud infrastructure, despite investing in large-scale data centers in places like North Carolina.
The company is thought to be gradually shifting away from its dependence on Amazon. It will, for instance, be turning its Mesa facility into a "global command center," and is working to establish its first European data centers in Ireland and Denmark. The Irish project has yet to begin construction, owing to delays caused by local concerns like environmental impact.
Recently it was revealed that Apple is planning to expand its Reno data center by over 375,000 square feet, at a cost of about $50.7 million. The facility currently handles tasks like Siri, FaceTime, and iMessage.
Update: Apple's system status page is showing an all clear as of 1:35 p.m. Pacific.
The issue is affecting some users of Apple Music, the Apple TV, and the Mac and iOS App Stores, plus a number of iCloud services including Notes, backup, web apps, and iCloud Drive, according to Apple's system status page. People may also be seeing trouble with iTunes, iBooks, and/or cloud-based Photos functions.
Problems began shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern time and are still ongoing.
While Apple hasn't acknowledged the source of the glitches, Amazon's S3 (Simple Storage Service) is currently experiencing "availibility issues" on the U.S. east coast, leading to problems for dependent companies. Apple is known to rely on Amazon for portions of its cloud infrastructure, despite investing in large-scale data centers in places like North Carolina.
The company is thought to be gradually shifting away from its dependence on Amazon. It will, for instance, be turning its Mesa facility into a "global command center," and is working to establish its first European data centers in Ireland and Denmark. The Irish project has yet to begin construction, owing to delays caused by local concerns like environmental impact.
Recently it was revealed that Apple is planning to expand its Reno data center by over 375,000 square feet, at a cost of about $50.7 million. The facility currently handles tasks like Siri, FaceTime, and iMessage.
Update: Apple's system status page is showing an all clear as of 1:35 p.m. Pacific.
Comments
I don't think they particularly like AWS because it is kind of unreliable and slow, but they do have 42 data centers around the world. Microsoft has more than 100. They also use Akamai which has 50 data centers. Until Apple can get to a similar scale they have no choice but to use those third party providers. Apple has nearly a billion users and no where near enough infrastructure to serve them with only 4-5 data centers that they own, all in the US. Their China data centers are owned by the Chinese. Not sure how many there are there. Apple is planning to build 2 new data centers in Europe.
I don't even know where to begin. Unless you have worked for, or sold to, a Cloud provider it's difficult to understand the complexity and enormity of the task. While Apple does have plenty of $$$ to throw at the problem, recruiting and maintaining the talent is equally (if not more) important. In case you haven't noticed, two of the three major Cloud service providers are based in Seattle. Not the SF Bay Area. Finally, it takes time to find locations, build the necessary datacenter capacity, procure and standup infrastructure, etc.
Apple's expertise is in PLATFORM and not Infrastructure.
And you won't get all the engineers.
There's nothing harder than getting into cloud.
Apple's system status page
DDOS attacks usually cannot be resolved by the engineers at the data center. They often need to call in specialized Cisco engineers who can analyze the packet signature of the attack and write a specific filter, then install it on the edge routers. That takes time.