Amazon Web Services may appear down because of an AWS service outage, a regional problem, or an issue with your own website settings. AWS contains many separate services, so one website can stop working even when the whole AWS platform is still online.
Is AWS Experiencing an Outage?
AWS services operate in different geographic areas called AWS Regions. A problem may affect one service in one region without affecting users elsewhere.
The first step is to check the AWS Health Dashboard. It displays reported service events across AWS regions. Signed-in users can also view account-specific events that may affect their own resources.
Your AWS Server May Have a Problem
Your website may be down because its Amazon EC2 instance has stopped, failed, or run out of resources. AWS automatically performs system and instance status checks to find hardware, networking, and software problems. You can view these checks inside the EC2 console.
Heavy traffic, low memory, full storage, broken website code, or a failed update can also make the server unavailable.
Your Domain Settings May Be Incorrect
Sometimes AWS is working properly, but visitors cannot reach the website because of a DNS configuration problem. Incorrect nameservers, missing records, or recent DNS changes can cause “Server Not Found” errors.
DNS updates may also take time to appear because internet providers can store older settings temporarily.
Other common causes include:
Incorrect firewall or security group rules
An expired SSL certificate
A deleted storage file or database
Failed website updates
Billing or account problems
Application errors
To solve the issue, check the AWS Health Dashboard, review your EC2 status, test your domain records, and inspect server logs. You should also confirm that all required AWS resources are running.
In many cases, AWS itself is not fully down. The problem may be limited to one service, region, server, or website configuration.