Storm in US downs servers, affects Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix

Popular photo-sharing service Instagram and social networking site Pinterest were intermittently inaccessible to users Saturday (Manila time), with "cloud" problems being blamed for it.

 

Tech site Mashable reported a powerful storm in Northern Virginia had taken out the cloud servers the services run on.

 

As of late Saturday afternoon (Sunday in Manila), it said Instagram appeared to have much functionality restored for most users.

 

Mashable noted Instagram uses Amazon's Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host its traffic and data. AWS powers businesses in 190 countries worldwide.

 

It also hosts Pinterest and Netflix, which also suffered outages during the weekend.

 

AWS, which started in 2006, also operates out of Oregon and northern California, but only its Virginia facilities were affected in Friday’s storm, Mashable said.

 

Instagram, Pinterest and Netflix had tweeted about the outage separately.

 

"We're sorry for the outage and working to get your Friday streaming back to normal as quickly as possible. Thank you for bearing with us," Netflix said.

 

"We're currently experiencing technical difficulties and we're working to correct the issues. Thanks for your patience," said Instagram. "Pinterest is currently unavailable due to server outages. Our goal is to be back up by 10:30PM PST. Thanks for your patience!" said Pinterest.