ChatGPT was globally down and this means everyone that was relying on the great technology to help them with their work had to either had to sit with a cup of coffee and wait or go back to the old ways of writing content yourself.
ChatGPT Answers for itself
ChatGPT, the actual chatbot had this to say about the situation when asked:
On February 27th, 2023, users of the ChatGPT platform experienced a brief outage. The issue was identified as instabilities with the database and the ChatGPT team promptly took action to restore service.
At 7:00 PST, the issue was first noted and the ChatGPT team began investigating the cause of the outage. By 7:40 PST, initial fixes had been implemented and traffic for ChatGPT began to improve.
However, in order to more promptly restore full service, the ChatGPT team performed database maintenance that systematically affected the entire service. This maintenance took place at 9:08 PST and was aimed at resolving the instabilities with the database.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and would like to assure our users that the ChatGPT team is dedicated to providing a seamless experience. We will continue to monitor the platform and take any necessary actions to ensure its stability and reliability.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
ChatGPT
Official ChatGPT Status Page
This can be checked against the status page: https://status.openai.com/
So what caused the outage? If they had to do database maintenance to solve the problem, it does not narrow it down, the usual culprit list is:
Common causes of database failure and slowdown
- Hardware failure: The failure of a server, hard drive, or other hardware component can cause an outage.
- Software bugs: Issues with database software can cause instability and result in an outage.
- Network issues: Network problems, such as slowdowns, congestion, or outages, can cause database issues.
- Power outages: An interruption in power can cause an outage, particularly if the database is not configured to automatically switch over to a backup power source.
- Human error: Human error, such as accidental deletion of data or misconfiguration of the database, can cause an outage.
- Cybersecurity threats: Cyberattacks or other malicious activity can cause an outage by compromising the security of the database.
Hopefully OpenAI will make a full Root Cause Analysis on the issue.
