AWS Outage Shows that The Public Cloud is No Safe Haven

Occasionally we’ll be talking about data center services available in the Direct LTx data center in Reading and someone will chime in with the suggestion that Direct LTx services are somehow less reliable than those of major public cloud providers.  

As shown by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage underway as this is being written on December 7, not only is that not the case, but the opposite may be true.  

According to news reports here, here, here, here, and in many other news outlets, Amazon itself, the Flex app used by Amazon drivers, along with Amazon services such Alexa, Prime Video, and Amazon Prime Music are all down.   Other widely used platforms relying upon AWS such as Ring, Disney+, Instacart, CashApp, Venmo, Robinhood, League of Legends, Robinhood, Roku, Kindle, the McDonalds app, Public.com, Protocol, RECUR, Splunk, and Coinbase are among those navigating downtime today.

AWS had similar issues in September, as well as in November of last year.   They’ve had many similar instances over the years in different parts of the world.   They have a highly complex infrastructure network with a lot of moving parts.   It shouldn’t be shocking that they have outages.

AWS has a hard-working staff of bright people, offers a valuable service, and many of our hybrid colocation customers use AWS.   Direct LTx offers direct cloud onramps to AWS and other public cloud providers from our data center.   We have nothing against AWS, wish them all the best, and despite our impressive uptime record certainly understand that any provider lives in a glass house, and we may have an outage someday.

But there’s no reason for the assumption that uptime is enhanced by going to the public cloud.  In fact, the opposite is likely true.   We would never try to discourage someone from using AWS if they had a staff knowledgeable in using AWS, it fit their budget, and met their business needs.  But there is no reliability edge and in fact, Direct LTx has proven over the years to be more dependable than AWS.   Does that mean we’ll never have an outage?   We certainly can’t say that.  But we’re justifiably proud of our stellar uptime record and would welcome the opportunity to share it with you. 

One critical advantage of colocation services at Direct LTx is that you know where your physical data is.  Your data is in a tangible place, in a server at the Direct LTx data center. You can make a physical backup, whether tape or disc, and you have hands-on access to both your primary and backup data.  Your data is readily and physically available to you, which is not the case with the public cloud. 

To ask Direct LTx specific questions about our company’s uptime record over the past 15 years email sales@directltx.com to arrange for a no-obligation consultation on your data center, cloud, and IT infrastructure needs.  We’d look forward to answering those questions.

Over 80 feet above the 500-year flood plain, with recent investments in generator upgrades and other infrastructure, and home to over a dozen fiber providers, Direct LTx is the high availability data center home for Pennsylvania enterprises requiring maximum uptime.  Email sales@directltx.com today.