{"id":3442,"date":"2021-12-29T16:30:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T16:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/?p=3442"},"modified":"2024-02-16T02:24:26","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T02:24:26","slug":"outage-alert-top-10-downtime-incidents-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uptime.com\/blog\/outage-alert-top-10-downtime-incidents-of-2021","title":{"rendered":"Outage Alert: Top 10 Downtime Incidents of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

2021 has been an eye-opening year for both businesses and consumers who use popular websites and applications. We have all seen notable increases in the frequency and severity of outages as dependency on internet infrastructure grows \u2013 with no signs of slowing down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With our reliance on automation and connectivity <\/span>expected to increase in 2022<\/span><\/a> \u2013 let\u2019s review some of the top internet outages and website downtime incidents of 2021.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amazon Web Services<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>December 7, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down:<\/b> 6.5 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Amazon infrastructure, Netflix, Slack, Whole Foods<\/span><\/p>\n

Is AWS down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Post Mortem: <\/b>https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/message\/12721\/<\/b><\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

AWS (Amazon Web Services)’s historic outage occurred on December 7, 2021 and lasted roughly 6 and a half hours. The breadth of Amazon and its reach caused not only their warehouse and delivery operations to stop, but also impacted <\/span>many <\/span><\/i>websites owned and affiliated with the company, such as Twitch.tv and Whole Foods, as well as\u00a0 Netflix, Slack, and other major tech companies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"AWS<\/p>\n

GitHub<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>November 27, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>2 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>GitHub<\/span><\/p>\n

Is GitHub down? <\/span>Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

GitHub, a tool used by companies like Apple, Amazon and Google and thousands of developers, suffered an outage November 27, 2021 that lasted 2 hours. This halted operations, API requests, packages, pages, and pull requests and highlights the interconnected nature of downtime.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Github\"<\/p>\n

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Facebook<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>October 4, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>6 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Facebook down? <\/b>Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook and its subsidiaries, Messenger, Instagram and Whatsapp all experienced outages lasting about 6 hours on October 4, 2021. Although mostly social media applications were affected, this outage stopped small businesses who use the platform and cut off employees using these platforms for internal collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"social<\/p>\n

Fastly<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>June 8, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>1 hour<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Amazon, eBay, Reddit, Spotify<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Fastly down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Post Mortem: https:\/\/www.fastly.com\/blog\/summary-of-june-8-outage<\/b><\/p>\n

Fastly, one of the world\u2019s largest CDN (Content Delivery Network) companies experienced an hour-long outage on June 8, 2021. This caused website downtime for many sites in a range of industries, like Amazon, <\/span>eBay, Reddit, Spotify, Twitch, and The New York Times.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Fastly\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Akamai<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>June 17, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>4 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Hong Kong Stock Exchange<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Akamai down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Similar to the Fastly outage, another CDN company, Akamai Technologies, experienced downtime on June 17, 2021. The downtime lasted for about 4 hours and affected websites like Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The intricate nature of the infrastructure behind these massive corporations caused one company\u2019s outage to have a domino effect on every other associated player.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Akami\"<\/p>\n

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Zoom<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>August 24, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>3 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Zoom Video Conferencing<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Zoom down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The now commonly used video conferencing application, Zoom, experienced an outage on August 24, 2021 lasting for 3 hours. Zoom has become integral to business communication and educational institutions since the onset of Covid-19, making the effects of this downtime nearly as wide-spread as the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"zoom\"<\/p>\n

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Microsoft Teams<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>March 15, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>3 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Microsoft down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft Teams experienced connectivity issues on March 15, 2021 alongside Azure, Microsoft 365 and other related services. The effects of this outage were felt around the world, specifically by businesses and educational institutions relying on Microsoft Teams for internal communication.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/p>\n

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Google<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>April 12, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b><1 hour<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Google down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s largest search engine had an outage on April 12, 2021 which was resolved in just under an hour. Unfortunately, Google\u2019s search engine wasn\u2019t the only service impacted \u2013 connected products like Youtube, Gmail, Google Drive and Classroom were all hit by downtime.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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CloudFlare<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>June 24, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>2 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Discord, AWS, Feedly<\/span><\/p>\n

Is CloudFlare down? <\/b>Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

CloudFlare experienced an outage lasting about 2 hours on June 24, 2021 impacting Discord, Feedly, AWS, Crunchyroll, Linode and other web services. The downtime triggered a 15% drop in traffic across its network and is yet another example of the domino effect of outages.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cloudfare\"<\/p>\n

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Salesforce<\/b><\/p>\n

Date: <\/b>May 11, 2021<\/span><\/p>\n

Down: <\/b>5 hours<\/span><\/p>\n

Impacted: <\/b>Salesforce<\/span><\/p>\n

Is Salesforce Down?<\/b> Website Status Check<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Salesforce was impacted by an outage on May 11, 2021 lasting just over 5 hours. The damage was so extensive their status page was taken down along with their infrastructure. Salesforce is a popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform relied on by many companies. One lesson here is that decoupling your status page from your primary infrastructure will let others know when you\u2019re up or down, and what you\u2019re doing to fix it. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"salesforce\"<\/p>\n

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The takeaway? Downtime can happen anytime.<\/b><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one lesson to takeaway from 2021\u2019s most notable outages, it\u2019s that no company (big or small) is immune to downtime. It is possible, however, to mitigate downtime with proactive website performance monitoring that alerts SREs and DevOps teams the moment an issue is detected. Some best practices we recommend for website performance monitoring are<\/span><\/p>\n