Amazon has said that a simple typo was the cause of several high-profile websites and services being knocked offline earlier in the week.
Hours of problems struck services like Q&A forum Quora, and Giphy, an image hosting service.
The sites rely on hosting provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) – a cloud computing provider.
A typo made during a routine debugging of the AWS billing system caused the failure.
“Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended,” Amazon said in an online statement.
The error required a full restart that “took longer than expected”.
Around 150,000 websites and services rely on AWS.
Among those affected by the failure was – somewhat ironically – Down Detector, a service that tracks downtime at major websites.
Amazon, which is the world’s largest provider of cloud services, says it is now making changes to help prevent a similar incident occurring in the future.
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
