The trouble started a little after 5 a.m. Eastern on Thursday when the company's Service Health Dashboard reported connectivity problems that were affecting its Relational Database Service, which is used to manage a relational database in the cloud, across multiple zones in the eastern U.S.

Because of server problems , which handles the company's EC2 Web hosting services, some websites, including popular sites, were left staggering or disabled.

Web sites Reddit, Foursquare, Quora and HootSuite, which suffered through Amazon's outage, are back up today.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at or subscribe to . Her e-mail address is .

in Computerworld's Web 2.0 and Web Apps Topic Center.