Thought Leadership
A software bug in AWS Cost Explorer displayed false billing estimates in the billions and trillions. Amazon has corrected the error.
On Friday at 1:33 AM Pacific Time, Amazon Web Services (AWS) informed its users about an incident via the AWS Health Dashboard. The analysis tool Cost Explorer displayed inaccurate estimated billing data at that time. Affected customers temporarily received automated billing forecasts showing amounts in the billions or trillions of dollars. Amazon identified the root cause within 90 minutes of starting the investigation. According to the company, an issue occurred when determining unit prices within the billing calculation subsystem.
“The displayed billing estimates do not reflect actual usage and charges.”
AWS
The company added that no action was required on the part of the customers.
Data correction requires recalculation of all estimates
As an immediate measure, the cloud provider paused updates to the estimated billing data. This prevented the incorrect amounts from rising further but temporarily froze the sums that were already displayed. Because the fix required a complete recalculation of the affected data series, the company announced a process lasting several hours to complete the cleanup.
After successfully containing the underlying system error, Amazon began integrating the corrected values into the Cost Management Console. The cleanup of the erroneous reports for all affected accounts was completed by Saturday, July 18 at 12:00 PM Pacific Time, according to an update from the operator.
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