In which I apologize for the Amazon AWS Outage

Honestly, I didn't mean it to happen.

I'm a (very) occasional user of AWS. And it is one of those businesses on the Internet where I pay using a pre-paid Visa card. Its one I have to remember to charge up every so often. And, in my defence, I've been a bit busy the past couple of weeks.

On April 18th I got an "urgent" message from Amazon saying that their attempt to charge me $0.09 for March usage had failed. And that if I didn't rectify the problem, they might suspend my account. But I was still busy so I didn't get round to recharging the card.

On April 21st, I got an even more urgent message from Amazon about the 9c I owed them. My account was going to be suspended. That was sent about 2:30 am PDT. Apparently that 9c was pretty important as Amazon then had its tummy ache.

I have since recharged my card and today got a message that Amazon had successfully processed the 9c charge. Hopefully all problems will be over. If I had known that my 9c would bring down half a data centre, I'd have made sure I was charged up. I'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Thank you for your patience.

PS. Some 'scientists' may start talking about the difference between 'correlation' and 'causation' and the lack of any technical analysis in my reaction. But I remember reading "For want of a nail" in primary school so its quite logical to me ! Besides my horoscope said that coincidences don't exist, it's all part of a larger design and don't trust Aquarians.

PPS. For a more serious take on cloud storage, try Joyent's blog (link via Robert Young at "Dr Codd was Right" )