# 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, sol)_
- Kind: Major incident · Label: outage (model (Jev))
- Changed: 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC · Detected: 2026-10-17 18:22 UTC
- [Source: https://stspg.io/r1bqsw00fm86](https://stspg.io/r1bqsw00fm86)
- [Company: Snowflake](https://rewindex.com/company/snowflake.md)
- Versions: before (none: first archived) → after incident\_version:164/yk5sqhcjp266@45a1422f9781
- Change 1 of 1 for this incident

## What changed

**1. Added: Title**

```diff
+ INC20000163
```

**2. Added: Impact**

```diff
+ major
```

**3. Added: Status**

```diff
+ postmortem
```

**4. Added: Start time**

```diff
+ 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC
```

**5. Added: Resolved time**

```diff
+ 2026-08-18 14:51 UTC
```

**6. Added: Affected components**

```diff
+ AI and ML, AWS - US East (N. Virginia) - AI and ML
```

**7. Added: Update** (investigating) · 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC

```diff
+ 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
```

**8. Added: Update** (identified) · 2026-08-18 13:33 UTC

```diff
+ 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.
```

**9. Added: Update** (monitoring) · 2026-08-18 13:55 UTC

```diff
+ 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.
```

**10. Added: Update** (resolved) · 2026-08-18 14:51 UTC

```diff
+ 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.
```

**11. Added: Update** (postmortem) · 2026-08-25 22:42 UTC

```diff
+ 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)
```

## History of this incident

| When (UTC) | Change | Label |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2026-08-18 12:58 UTC | Major incident: INC20000163 (this change) | outage |

All Snowflake changes: [timeline](https://rewindex.com/company/snowflake/changes.md)
_Diff excerpts are shown on normalized text: dates, counters and tokens appear as ‹date›, ‹count›, ‹tok›; noise-only edits are hidden. Rewindex shows the changed passages, not a copy of the page._


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Canonical: https://rewindex.com/change/i453bf036cefdee · Markdown: https://rewindex.com/change/i453bf036cefdee.md · JSON: https://rewindex.com/api/v1/changes/i453bf036cefdee · Generated 2026-10-18T01:52:10.883Z