The AWS us-east-1 Outage Was Predictable. Your Architecture Was Not Ready.
December 7 reminded everyone that us-east-1 is a single point of failure for half the internet. Again. I am annoyed.
AWS
Definition
AWS coverage in this archive spans 11 posts from Mar 2016 to Dec 2021 and focuses on reliability, delivery speed, and cost discipline as one system, not three separate concerns. The strongest adjacent threads are cloud, architecture, and infrastructure. Recurring title motifs include cloud, bill, aws, and terraform.
Key claims
- Most posts prioritize predictable operations over feature breadth or stack novelty.
- Early posts lean on cost and cloud, while newer posts lean on cloud and bill as constraints shifted.
- This topic repeatedly intersects with cloud, architecture, and infrastructure, so design choices here rarely stand alone.
Practical checklist
- Set SLOs first, then choose tooling that keeps deploy, observability, and rollback simple.
- Start with the newest post to calibrate current constraints, then backtrack to older entries for first principles.
- When boundary questions appear, cross-read cloud and architecture before committing implementation details.
Failure modes
- Adding platform layers faster than the team can operate and debug them.
- Chasing throughput gains without proving they improve end-user reliability.
- Applying guidance from 2016 to 2021 without revisiting assumptions as context changed.
Suggested reading path
- Start here (current state): The AWS us-east-1 Outage Was Predictable. Your Architecture Was Not Ready.
- Then read (operating middle): Your Cloud Bill Is a Design Document
- Finish with (foundational context): AWS Lambda: When Serverless Makes Sense (And When It Doesn’t)
Related posts
- The AWS us-east-1 Outage Was Predictable. Your Architecture Was Not Ready.
- Terraform at Scale: What Changed Since 2019
- Multi-Cloud Is Mostly a Marketing Strategy
- Serverless vs Containers: Where the Math Stops Working
- Your Cloud Security Is Falling Apart Right Now
- Your Cloud Bill Is a Design Document
- Your Cloud Bill Is Lying to You: A Cost Optimization Comparison
- Your Cloud Bill Is Lying to You
References
Terraform at Scale: What Changed Since 2019
Two years ago I wrote about Terraform patterns for growing teams. Here's what held up, what broke, and what I do differently now.
Multi-Cloud Is Mostly a Marketing Strategy
Multi-cloud sounds great in vendor pitches. In practice, it doubles your operational burden for benefits most teams will never need.
Serverless vs Containers: Where the Math Stops Working
Serverless is great until it isn't. A comparison of serverless and containers at different traffic scales, with actual numbers on where the economics flip.
Your Cloud Security Is Falling Apart Right Now
Everyone's scrambling to scale cloud infrastructure overnight. I've seen what happens when security gets deprioritized under pressure — at NATO exercises, at Decloud, at the fintech startup. Here's how to not become a headline.
Your Cloud Bill Is a Design Document
Cloud cost management isn't a finance problem. It's an architecture problem disguised as a spreadsheet. Here's how to treat your AWS bill like the engineering signal it actually is.
Your Cloud Bill Is Lying to You: A Cost Optimization Comparison
A direct comparison of cloud cost optimization strategies -- what actually moves the needle vs. what just makes finance feel better.
Your Cloud Bill Is Lying to You
That clean AWS pricing page has almost nothing to do with your actual invoice. I learned this the hard way at the fintech startup.
The Real Cost of Running Your Own Servers in 2016
Most startups have no business running their own servers. The math is not close.
Why I Moved Our Infrastructure to Terraform
We moved from console-driven, script-heavy infrastructure to Terraform so changes are reviewed, reproducible, and recoverable from code.
AWS Lambda: When Serverless Makes Sense (And When It Doesn't)
Lambda is a sharp tool for specific jobs. The problem is everyone wants to use it for everything.