Changes / Snowflake / INC20000163
Snowflake: Major incident: INC20000163
Summary
Snowflake reported a major outage affecting Cortex Code in Snowsight in AWS - US East (N. Virginia), from 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC to 2026-08-18 14:51 UTC (1 h 53 min). Customers could encounter internal server errors; Snowflake identified container scheduling issues in its compute infrastructure and implemented a fix.
Machine-written from the diff below (Sol; type: incident outage). Check the diff before relying on it.
What changed
Before: not present
After: INC20000163
Before: not present
After: major
Before: not present
After: postmortem
Before: not present
After: 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC
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After: 2026-08-18 14:51 UTC
Before: not present
After: AI and ML, AWS - US East (N. Virginia) - AI and ML
Before: not present
After: Current status: We're investigating an issue with Snowflake Data Cloud. We'll provide an update within 1 hour.
Customer experience: Customers hosted in the specified regions may experience issues with AI and ML functionality. Specifically, when using Cortex Code in Snowsight, customer may see the following: “Internal Server error: You may need to start a new chat.”. All other Snowflake features are not impacted.
ETA: An ETA is not yet available. We'll provide one as soon as possible. In the meantime, we recommend that affected customers using replication initiate their failover procedures.
Incident start time: 11:10 UTC August 18, 2026
Before: not present
After: Current status: We've identified an issue with container scheduling in our compute infrastructure that is affecting AI and ML functionality, and we're implementing a fix to restore service. We'll provide another update within 30 minutes.
Customer experience: Customers hosted in the specified region may be unable to use Cortex Code in Snowsight and may see the following error message: "Internal Server error: You may need to start a new chat." All other Snowflake features are not impacted.
ETA: Our current estimate is that service will be restored within 30 minutes.
Incident start time: 11:20 UTC August 18, 2026
Preliminary root cause: Resource exhaustion in the compute infrastructure caused container scheduling failures, resulting in AI and ML functionality becoming unavailable.
Before: not present
After: Current status: We've implemented the fix for this issue, and we'll continue to monitor the environment until we're confident all services are functioning properly. We'll provide another update within 60 minutes.
Customer experience: Customers hosted in the specified region may have been unable to use Cortex Code in Snowsight and may have seen the following error message: "Internal Server error: You may need to start a new chat." All other Snowflake features are not impacted.
Incident start time: 11:20 UTC August 18, 2026
Incident end time: 13:45 UTC August 18, 2026
Preliminary root cause: Resource exhaustion in the compute infrastructure caused container scheduling failures, resulting in AI and ML functionality becoming unavailable.
Before: not present
After: Current status: We've implemented the fix for this issue and monitored the environment to confirm that service was restored. If you experience additional issues or have questions, please open a support case via Snowflake Community or the Support page in Snowsight.
Customer experience: Customers hosted in the specified regions may have experienced issues with AI and ML functionality. Specifically, when using Cortex Code in Snowsight, customers may have seen the following: “Internal Server error: You may need to start a new chat.” All other Snowflake features were not impacted.
Incident start time: 11:20 UTC August 18, 2026
Incident end time: 13:45 UTC August 18, 2026
Preliminary root cause: Resource exhaustion in the compute infrastructure caused container scheduling failures, resulting in AI and ML functionality becoming unavailable.
A root cause analysis (RCA) will be conducted and a summary will be shared on the Snowflake status page within 5 business days.
Before: not present
After: Snowflake Engineering has completed the postmortem of this service incident. A detailed Root Cause Analysis \(RCA\) is available on the Snowflake Community site: [https://community.snowflake.com/s/article/INC20000163](https://community.snowflake.com/s/article/INC20000163)
First version of this incident archived by Rewindex. View the live incident (opens in new tab).
History of this incident
| When (UTC) | Change | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Major incident: INC20000163 (this change) Snowflake reported a major outage affecting Cortex Code in Snowsight in AWS - US East (N. Virginia), from 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC to 2026-08-18 14:51 UTC (1 h 53 min). Customers could encounter internal server errors; Snowflake identified container scheduling issues in its compute infrastructure and implemented a fix. | Major incident |
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