[dba-Tech] Why was the Amazon cloud service down across the country?

Amazon's cloud services have been down a few times and the last crash was
the biggest and covered much of the world. There have been no official
comments for Amazon and for good reason. Finally, an ex-tech from Reddit, no
longer under a gag order, has spoken out and the cause isn't pretty.

It appears that a majority of the problems are related to old and failing
equipment, which is too slow, can fail without warning and there is no
additional equipment for fail-over services. IOW Amazon is supplying a high
end service on a shoe-string budget and getting caught out...and apparently
not learning from their mistakes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the
_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx

Jim