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AWS Outage: A Single Cloud Region Shouldn’t Take Down the World. But It Did.

AWS Outage: A Single Cloud Region Shouldn’t Take Down the World. But It Did.

TL;DR

A major AWS outage disrupted high-profile services like Amazon, Snapchat, and Disney+, affecting over 70 AWS services and causing widespread operational issues.

Key Points

Highlight key points with color coding based on sentiment (positive, neutral, negative).

The AWS outage was primarily due to an "operational issue" related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in the US-EAST-1 region.

The outage affected over 70 AWS services, disrupting major websites and applications such as Amazon, Snapchat, Disney+, Reddit, and Canva.

AWS reported signs of recovery shortly after the incident, although some services continued to experience issues.

The incident underscores the risks associated with the heavy reliance on a few major cloud service providers.

Past similar outages included those that brought down Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp due to configuration errors, and Google services because of internal storage failures.

Key Numbers

Present key numerics and statistics in a minimalist format.
70

The number of affected AWS services

5000

Reports made by Reddit users

6.5 Million

Reports were made globally (Downdetector.com)

+500

The total number of reports made globally across all companies

800,000

The number of reports made in the UK alone in two hours (downdetector.com)

5000

The number of issues flagged by Snapchat users

Stakeholder Relationships

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Organizations

Key entities and stakeholders, categorized for clarity: people, organizations, tools, events, regulatory bodies, and industries.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Service Provider

AWS was responsible for managing and resolving the major outage that disrupted numerous high-profile websites and services.

Amazon E-commerce and Cloud Computing Company

Amazon was one of the high-profile companies affected by the AWS outage, impacting its service delivery.

Snapchat Social Media Platform

Snapchat experienced service disruptions due to the AWS outage, affecting its user access.

Disney+ Streaming Service

Disney+ was affected by the AWS outage, disrupting its streaming services.

Reddit Social News Aggregation and Discussion Website

Reddit faced service disruptions as a result of the AWS outage, impacting its platform availability.

Canva Graphic Design Platform

Canva was one of the services disrupted by the AWS outage, affecting its design tools availability.

Coinbase Cryptocurrency Exchange

Coinbase experienced significant disruptions due to the AWS outage, impacting its trading services.

Events

Key entities and stakeholders, categorized for clarity: people, organizations, tools, events, regulatory bodies, and industries.
AWS Outage Service Disruption Event

The AWS outage was a major event that disrupted over 70 AWS services, affecting numerous high-profile websites and platforms.

Timeline of Events

Timeline of key events and milestones.
2025-10-20T02:01:00-07:00 AWS reported operational issue

AWS reported an "operational issue" affecting multiple services and began working on recovery.

2025-10-20T03:03:00-07:00 AWS confirmed recovery of global services

AWS confirmed that global services and features relying on US-EAST-1 had recovered.

2025-10-20T11:00:00+01:00 Reddit experienced user-reported problems

Reddit experienced a spike in user-reported problems, despite other services recovering.

2025-10-20T11:12:00+01:00 AWS identified potential root cause

AWS identified a potential root cause for error rates in the US-EAST-1 Region.

2025-10-20T11:27:00+01:00 Ring doorbells connectivity issues reported

Ring doorbells were reported to be experiencing connectivity issues.

2025-10-20T11:34:00+01:00 Downdetector reported global issue reports

Downdetector reported over four million global issue reports, with more than 500 companies affected.

2025-10-20T11:39:00+01:00 AWS announced significant signs of recovery

AWS announced significant signs of recovery, with most requests succeeding.

2025-10-20T12:01:00+01:00 Post Office reported issues with services

The Post Office reported issues with Amazon Click and Collect and Payzone services.

2025-10-20T12:04:00+01:00 HMRC confirmed customer access issues

HMRC confirmed customer access issues due to the AWS outage.

2025-10-20T12:20:00+01:00 AWS stated most services were recovering

AWS stated that most of its services were recovering.

2025-10-20T12:32:00+01:00 AWS mentioned DNS resolution issue

AWS mentioned the issue might be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1.

2025-10-20T12:46:00+01:00 Reports of websites and apps down

Reports indicated that many websites and apps were down due to the AWS outage.

2025-10-20T13:09:00+01:00 AWS announced underlying issue fixed

AWS announced the underlying issue was fixed, but some issues persisted.

2025-10-20T13:11:00+01:00 Lloyds Banking Group services coming back online

Lloyds Banking Group reported its services were coming back online.

2025-10-20T13:22:00+01:00 Reddit continued to face problems

Reddit continued to face problems as other services recovered.

Long-form summary

A significant outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) disrupted numerous high-profile websites and services, including Amazon, Snapchat, Disney+, Reddit, and Canva. The outage was attributed to an "operational issue" affecting over 70 AWS services, causing widespread disruptions in cloud-based games and crypto exchanges like Coinbase. AWS reported signs of recovery shortly after the incident, but some services, such as Reddit, continued to experience issues.

The outage also impacted government websites like the UK's HMRC and various banking services, including Lloyds, Halifax, and the Bank of Scotland, leading to declined card transactions and inaccessible online banking. AWS identified the issue as related to DNS resolution in the US-EAST-1 region and worked on multiple paths to accelerate recovery. Despite significant recovery signs, some services faced delays due to a backlog of queued requests.

The incident highlighted the vulnerability of relying on a few major cloud service providers, as disruptions can have extensive ripple effects across numerous platforms.

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