AWS Down? Complete Outage Survival Guide for Developers

"We can't replicate the problem right now."

That's AWS support's favorite line during an outage. Your app is down, customers are angry, and you're helplessly refreshing the AWS Status Page hoping for green checkmarks.

AWS outages are rare but catastrophic. When US-East-1 goes down, half the internet breaks with it. Here's your complete survival guide for the next time AWS fails you.

Quick Check: Is AWS Actually Down?

Don't assume it's AWS. Most "AWS down" reports are actually:

  • Misconfigured security groups
  • Exceeded service limits
  • Accidental resource deletion
  • Your own code bugs

1. Check AWS Status Dashboard

Official source:
🔗 status.aws.amazon.com

What to look for:

All green: AWS is fine (problem is likely on your end)

Yellow/Orange indicators:

  • "Service degradation"
  • "Elevated error rates"
  • Partial outage in specific region

Red indicators:

  • "Service disruption"
  • Total outage

Important: AWS status page is notoriously slow to update. Often lags 15-30 minutes behind actual outages.

2. Check Twitter/X

Search: "AWS down" or "#AWSOutage"

Why it works:

  • Developers report outages instantly
  • See which services are affected
  • Geographic patterns emerge
  • AWS support team responds here

Signs of real outage:

  • 1,000+ tweets in 10 minutes
  • Multiple AWS services mentioned
  • Users across different regions affected

3. Check Specific AWS Service

AWS is massive. One service down ≠ all of AWS down.

Key services to check:

Service What It Does Impact if Down
EC2 Virtual servers Apps can't run
S3 Object storage Can't serve files/images
RDS Databases Can't read/write data
Lambda Serverless functions APIs broken
CloudFront CDN Slow page loads
Route 53 DNS Domain resolution fails
DynamoDB NoSQL database APIs broken

Test specific service:

# Test S3 access
aws s3 ls s3://your-bucket-name

# Test EC2 instance
aws ec2 describe-instances --region us-east-1

# Test RDS
aws rds describe-db-instances --region us-east-1

4. Check Your AWS Region

AWS regions are independent. US-East-1 down doesn't mean EU-West-1 is down.

Common regions:

  • us-east-1 (N. Virginia) - Most popular, most outages
  • us-west-2 (Oregon)
  • eu-west-1 (Ireland)
  • ap-southeast-1 (Singapore)

Test another region:

# If us-east-1 is down, try us-west-2
aws s3 ls --region us-west-2

Pro tip: If your primary region is down, failover to backup region (if you have one).

Common AWS Outage Scenarios

Scenario 1: US-East-1 Total Outage

What happens:

  • 40% of AWS resources are in US-East-1
  • When it goes down, massive internet disruption
  • Netflix, Reddit, Slack, and thousands of sites affected

Recent examples:

  • December 2021: 7-hour outage (Route 53 + EC2)
  • December 2022: 3-hour outage (EC2 networking)

Impact:

  • Apps hosted in US-East-1 → completely down
  • Apps using S3/CloudFront in US-East-1 → slow/broken
  • Apps in other regions → often still affected (dependencies)

What you can do:

  • Nothing (if single-region deployment)
  • Switch to backup region (if multi-region)
  • Wait for AWS to fix (typically 2-6 hours)

Scenario 2: S3 Outage

What happens:

  • Object storage fails
  • Images, videos, static files can't load
  • Apps using S3 for uploads → broken

Recent examples:

  • February 2017: 4-hour S3 outage (typo in command)
  • Broke half the internet (many sites use S3 for images)

Impact:

  • Websites show broken images
  • File uploads fail
  • Serverless apps using S3 triggers → broken
  • CloudFront CDN breaks (uses S3 as origin)

What you can do:

  • Serve cached/fallback images
  • Queue uploads for retry later
  • Switch to different CDN (Cloudflare R2, DigitalOcean Spaces)

Scenario 3: Lambda/API Gateway Outage

What happens:

  • Serverless functions don't execute
  • API requests return 500 errors
  • Scheduled Lambda functions skip execution

Impact:

  • APIs completely broken
  • Webhooks don't fire
  • Background jobs don't run

What you can do:

  • Fall back to EC2-hosted API (if you have one)
  • Show cached responses
  • Queue requests for replay when service recovers

Scenario 4: RDS/DynamoDB Outage

What happens:

  • Database reads/writes fail
  • Apps can't fetch data
  • Transactions fail

Impact:

  • Apps show errors or blank pages
  • Users can't log in
  • E-commerce orders fail

What you can do:

  • Serve cached data (Redis/Memcached)
  • Read-only mode (disable writes)
  • Fall back to secondary database (if multi-AZ)

Scenario 5: Route 53 (DNS) Outage

What happens:

  • Domain name resolution fails
  • Your domain → IP mapping breaks
  • Users can't reach your site (even if servers are up)

Recent examples:

  • October 2019: 2-hour Route 53 outage
  • February 2020: Partial Route 53 degradation

Impact:

  • Users get "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN" errors
  • Even if your app is running, no one can access it

What you can do:

  • Use secondary DNS provider (Cloudflare, Google DNS)
  • Pre-configure DNS failover
  • Communicate via social media (users can't reach your site)

Immediate Actions During AWS Outage

Step 1: Verify It's Actually AWS

Don't assume.

Quick tests:

# Test AWS CLI access
aws sts get-caller-identity

# Test specific service
curl -I https://s3.amazonaws.com

# Check region connectivity
ping ec2.us-east-1.amazonaws.com

If AWS CLI works → problem might be your code.

Step 2: Check Impact Scope

Questions to answer:

  1. Which AWS service is down? (EC2, S3, Lambda, etc.)
  2. Which region is affected?
  3. Is it total outage or degraded performance?
  4. Are customers impacted?

Impact assessment:

EC2 down + us-east-1 → Critical (app offline)
S3 slow + all regions → Medium (images load slowly)
Lambda errors + partial → Low (retry logic catches it)

Step 3: Communicate with Users

Don't wait for AWS to announce.

Communication timeline:

  • 0-5 min: Update status page
  • 5-15 min: Send email to affected users
  • 15-30 min: Social media update
  • Every 30 min: Status updates

Example status page update:

⚠️ Investigating: We're experiencing issues with our API
due to AWS service disruption in US-East-1. 

Our team is monitoring the situation and will provide 
updates every 30 minutes.

Alternative: Use our EU region at eu.yourapp.com

What NOT to say: ❌ "AWS is down, nothing we can do"
✅ "We're experiencing AWS-related issues. Monitoring closely."

Step 4: Implement Workarounds

If you have multi-region:

# DNS failover to backup region
aws route53 change-resource-record-sets \
  --hosted-zone-id YOUR_ZONE \
  --change-batch file://failover.json

If you have backup providers:

// Fall back to different cloud
if (awsDown) {
  useGoogleCloudStorage();
}

If you have nothing:

  • Enable maintenance mode
  • Show cached content
  • Queue critical operations

Step 5: Monitor AWS Status Closely

Set up alerts:

  1. API Status Check → Slack alerts
  2. Follow @awscloud on Twitter
  3. Monitor AWS Status Dashboard

Track:

  • When outage started
  • Services affected
  • Estimated resolution time (if AWS provides one)

Long-Term Prevention Strategies

1. Multi-Region Architecture

The gold standard for AWS resilience.

Architecture:

Primary:    us-east-1 (N. Virginia)
Failover:   us-west-2 (Oregon)
Backup:     eu-west-1 (Ireland)

Traffic routing: Route 53 health checks
Data sync: Cross-region replication

Pros:

  • Survive total regional outage
  • Zero downtime failover
  • Better global latency

Cons:

  • 2-3x cost
  • Complex to manage
  • Data consistency challenges

When to do it:

  • Revenue > $100K/month
  • SLA commitments (99.99%+)
  • Can't afford downtime

2. Multi-Cloud Strategy

Use multiple cloud providers.

Example setup:

Primary:  AWS (us-east-1)
Backup:   Google Cloud (us-central1)
CDN:      Cloudflare
DNS:      Cloudflare + Route 53

Pros:

  • Survive entire AWS outage
  • Negotiate better pricing
  • Best-of-breed services

Cons:

  • Much higher complexity
  • Need expertise in multiple clouds
  • Harder to manage

When to do it:

  • Enterprise scale
  • Strict SLA requirements
  • Budget for complexity

3. Caching Strategy

Reduce dependency on live AWS services.

Layers:

Browser → Cloudflare CDN → Application Cache (Redis) 
→ AWS Database

During outage:

  • Cloudflare serves cached pages
  • Redis serves cached data
  • Users get stale but working site

Implementation:

// Cache database queries aggressively
const cachedData = await redis.get(key);
if (cachedData) return cachedData;

try {
  const freshData = await database.query(sql);
  await redis.set(key, freshData, 'EX', 3600);
  return freshData;
} catch (error) {
  // AWS down? Return stale cache
  return await redis.get(key + ':stale');
}

4. Graceful Degradation

Don't break entire app when one service fails.

Example:

// Payment API down? Show alternative
async function processPayment() {
  try {
    return await stripe.charge(...);
  } catch (error) {
    // Stripe (AWS-hosted) down?
    if (error.code === 'SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE') {
      // Offer PayPal, which uses Google Cloud
      return showPayPalOption();
    }
  }
}

Features to degrade:

  • Images → Placeholders
  • Search → Cached results
  • Recommendations → Static list
  • Analytics → Queue for later

5. Status Page

Build your own status page (not hosted on AWS).

Why:

  • If AWS is down, your status page should still work
  • Host on different provider (Vercel, Netlify, GitHub Pages)

Example stack:

Status page: Vercel (not AWS)
Monitoring: API Status Check
Alerts: Slack, email

What to include:

  • Current status (green/yellow/red)
  • Historical uptime
  • Incident timeline
  • Subscribe to updates

6. Runbook for AWS Outages

Document response plan before outage happens.

Template:

## AWS Outage Runbook

### Immediate Actions (0-15 min)
1. [ ] Confirm outage (AWS Status + API Status Check)
2. [ ] Notify team (Slack #incidents channel)
3. [ ] Update status page
4. [ ] Email affected customers

### Failover Procedures (15-30 min)
1. [ ] Switch DNS to backup region (runbook link)
2. [ ] Verify backup is healthy
3. [ ] Monitor traffic shift

### Communication (ongoing)
1. [ ] Update status every 30 min
2. [ ] Monitor Twitter @awscloud
3. [ ] Update customers when resolved

### Post-Mortem (after resolution)
1. [ ] Document timeline
2. [ ] Calculate revenue impact
3. [ ] Review failover performance
4. [ ] Update runbook with learnings

What to Expect During AWS Outage

Timeline

Typical AWS outage:

Hour 0: Outage begins
Hour 0.5: Developers notice, Twitter explodes
Hour 1: AWS acknowledges on status page
Hour 2-4: AWS engineers working on fix
Hour 4-6: Services gradually recover
Hour 6+: Post-mortem published

Major outages can last 8-12 hours.

Communication from AWS

What AWS typically says:

Initial:

"We are investigating increased error rates for [service] in the US-EAST-1 region."

Update 1:

"We have identified the issue and are working on mitigation."

Update 2:

"We are seeing recovery in [service]. Monitoring continues."

Resolution:

"[Service] has recovered. We continue to monitor. Post-mortem to follow."

What it actually means:

  • "Investigating" = We're panicking too
  • "Identified" = We think we know what's wrong
  • "Mitigation" = Trying fixes
  • "Monitoring" = Hoping it stays fixed

What You Should Do

Hour 0-1: Assess

  • Confirm outage
  • Determine impact
  • Notify stakeholders

Hour 1-2: Mitigate

  • Implement workarounds
  • Communicate with users
  • Monitor situation

Hour 2+: Wait

  • Keep users updated
  • Monitor AWS status
  • Document timeline

After recovery:

  • Verify everything works
  • Send resolution update
  • Write post-mortem
  • Improve resilience

AWS Outage Survival Checklist

Before an outage (prepare):

  • Set up AWS status monitoring (API Status Check)
  • Document critical AWS dependencies
  • Create failover runbooks
  • Test multi-region failover (if you have it)
  • Build status page (not on AWS)
  • Set up alternative communication channels

During an outage (respond):

  • Confirm it's actually AWS (not your code)
  • Check which services/regions affected
  • Update status page immediately
  • Notify affected customers
  • Implement workarounds/failovers
  • Monitor AWS status for updates
  • Update customers every 30-60 min

After an outage (learn):

  • Write post-mortem
  • Calculate revenue impact
  • Review what worked / what didn't
  • Update runbooks
  • Improve resilience architecture
  • Consider multi-region/multi-cloud

Common Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Assuming AWS is always reliable
Even 99.99% uptime = 52 minutes downtime/year.

✅ Plan for failure: Build resilience from day one.

❌ Putting everything in US-East-1
Most outages happen in US-East-1 (most resources = highest risk).

✅ Spread across regions: Even if just for static assets.

❌ No communication plan
Users panic when apps go down with no explanation.

✅ Update status page within 5 minutes: Even if just "investigating."

❌ Blaming AWS publicly
"AWS is down, not our fault!" sounds defensive.

✅ Take ownership: "We're experiencing AWS-related issues and are working on a resolution."

❌ Not testing failover
Failover that hasn't been tested = failover that won't work.

✅ Test quarterly: Run chaos engineering drills.

Key Takeaways

AWS outages are rare but inevitable.

Survival strategy:

  1. ✅ Monitor AWS proactively (API Status Check)
  2. ✅ Have failover plan (even if just multi-region)
  3. ✅ Implement caching aggressively
  4. ✅ Build graceful degradation
  5. ✅ Communicate transparently with users
  6. ✅ Document everything in runbooks

Remember: AWS downtime doesn't have to mean your downtime. Smart architecture and good communication turn outages from disasters into minor inconveniences.

Need AWS outage alerts? Monitor AWS status in real-time with API Status Check - Get instant Slack/Discord notifications when AWS services degrade.

Related Resources

Monitor Your APIs

Check the real-time status of 100+ popular APIs used by developers.

View API Status →