AWS outage originated at Northern Virginia data center

The debate of the data center development boom in the DMV

Virginia has the highest concentration of data centers in the country, and with the debate over development in Prince William Country, many are wondering: Is my neighborhood next?

Amazon Web Services was offline early Monday morning, the outage affecting multiple websites and apps on Monday. 

AWS says the outage has been mitigated, but some websites and apps continue to see the effects. 

The outage originated at a Northern Virginia data center in the US-EAST-1 region. There are dozens of data centers operated by Amazon in Northern Virginia, which in recent years has become one of the largest hubs of data centers in the world. 

AWS has not confirmed what caused the outage. 

Another Bristow data center vote set for Tuesday

For the fourth time, the Prince William County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote Tuesday night on the proposed Bristow Data Center Campus and residents are asking if this time it will actually happen.

The backstory:

Demand for data centers ballooned in recent years due to the rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and local governments are competing for lucrative deals with big tech companies.

In Northern Virginia, more than 300 data centers dot the rolling hills of the area’s westernmost counties.

The rise of data centers have many concerneed about energy costs and water consumption. 

Over 25% of all power produced in Virginia in 2023 went to data centers, a figure that could rise as high as 46% by 2030 if data center growth continues at its current pace. Some estimates also show a mid-sized data center commands the same water usage every day as 1,000 households, prompting concerns over the cost of water.

But the data centers bring in money for the state. 

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in 2024 that Virginia’s existing data centers brought in $1 billion in tax revenue, more than the $750 million in tax breaks given to the tech companies that own them in 2023.