Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced an outage between 11:49 p.m. on Sunday night and 2:24 a.m. early Monday morning, according to the Amazon website.
According to Down Detector, the disruption temporarily took down major platforms including Canvas. AWS said in a statement that the issue had been fully resolved towards the evening, but students said the outage showed how dependent campus life has become on online systems.
The AWS outage caused widespread disruptions across the internet, affecting thousands of websites and apps, according to an Oct. 20 article from Time Magazine.
AWS reported “service interruptions in one of their regional data centers,” which led to slower performance or outages of major platforms such as Snapchat, Venmo, and even educational servers such as Canvas, according to Time Magazine
In a campuswide message sent on Oct. 20, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Vincent Del Casino, confirmed that the AWS outages disrupted several university systems, causing slow or failed connections for many students and employees.
He said AWS was still working to restore full service and that SJSU’s IT team would continue monitoring the situation and posting updates on the IT Status Page.
“These disruptions are impacting system availability and response times for several of our university applications, including Canvas, Qless, and Spartan Connect,” Del Casino wrote.
The message also encouraged faculty to show understanding towards students who faced connection issues.
“We ask that you provide them some grace to complete assignments because this interruption is outside of their control,” Del Casino wrote.
In the same email, SJSU’s IT team said it will continue to monitor campus systems and urged students to check the IT Status Page for any updates.
Nathan Viray, a third-year marketing student, said Canvas, which he uses daily for coursework, completely failed during his scheduled class time.
“My main concern was with Canvas – I for sure noticed Canvas because that’s what I use,” Viray said.
“I was so mad because I had class at (noon) and had a group project. I couldn’t work on it at all and couldn’t contact my peers, so I was pretty upset” Viray added.
Isabella Reyes, a first-year communications student, said she had similar frustrations.
“I couldn’t submit my homework or see my professor’s updates,” Reyes said.
“I thought it was just my Wi-Fi until everyone in my group chat said they couldn’t log in either.”
The outage was marked “Resolved” as of 4:09 p.m., according to the SJSU System Status Page
“It shows how dependent we are on it … especially after COVID I definitely feel like our dependency on online sources increased,” Viray said.
