One2Call Blog

Today's AWS Outage – What SMEs Need to Know and Do

Written by Brandon Carter | 20 Oct 2025

Updated: 14:10, 20 Oct

Latest update - AWS Service Issues

What's been happening?

Earlier today, Amazon Web Services (AWS)—which powers many online tools and platforms—had a technical issue in one of its main data centres in the US. This caused delays and errors for some services that businesses rely on, including:

  • Starting up new servers (used by websites, apps, and cloud systems)
  • Automated scaling (where systems adjust based on demand)
  • Message processing (used for things like alerts, updates, or automated tasks)

See Amazon's latest technical update

✅ What’s Been Fixed So Far

  • AWS has fixed the issue that was stopping automated tasks from running properly.
  • Services that track activity and send alerts (like logs and notifications) are now working normally.

🧠 What This Means for Your Business

If your business uses cloud-based tools or platforms (especially ones hosted on AWS), you might have noticed:

  • Slower performance
  • Delays in automated processes
  • Trouble launching new systems or services

Most of these issues are now improving, and AWS is recommending that systems be set up to allow flexibility—so they can automatically choose the best location to run from.

⏰ Next Update

AWS will share another update around 2:30 PM UK time today.

 

 

Updated: 10:50, 20 Oct

DNS issue acknowledged, and on way to resolution.

Amazon have acknowledged in their latest status update that the core issue is DNS related, and that most AWS services are now operating normally.

Here's a summary of their update:

  • ✅ DNS issue resolved: The core DNS problem has been fixed.
  • 🔄 Most AWS services are operating normally, but some requests may still be throttled.
  • 🕒 Backlogs remain: Services like CloudTrail and Lambda are still catching up on delayed events.
  • ⚠️ EC2 issues in US-EAST-1: Launching new EC2 instances (and services that rely on EC2, like ECS) in this region is still seeing higher error rates.
  • 🧹 DynamoDB tip: If you're having trouble accessing DynamoDB in US-EAST-1, try flushing your DNS cache to refresh outdated records.
  • ⏳ Full recovery is still in progress.
  • 📅 Next update expected by 11:15 AM GMT, or sooner if more information becomes available.

What is DNS?

  • DNS (Domain Name System) is like the internet’s phone book — it translates human-friendly web addresses (like amazon.com) into machine-readable IP addresses so your browser or app knows where to connect.
  • If DNS breaks, services can’t find each other — even if they’re working fine otherwise.
  • In this case, a DNS issue at AWS meant many services couldn’t locate the endpoints they needed to operate, causing errors and delays across multiple regions and services.

What is throttling?

Throttling means AWS is temporarily limiting the number of requests to certain services to prevent overload while systems recover.

 

Updated: 10:13, 20 Oct

What’s happening?

As of this morning (20 October 2025), a major outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) is causing widespread disruption across dozens of popular platforms including Snapchat, Ring, Roblox, Canva, Zoom, Signal, GOV.UK, and many more (see https://downdetector.co.uk/). 

The issue appears to be rooted in AWS’s North Virginia region, which is a key hub for global cloud infrastructure. Amazon engineers are actively investigating and mitigating the problem, but many services remain affected.

What services are down?

The outage is impacting:

  • Consumer apps: Snapchat, Ring, Alexa, Pokémon Go, Fortnite 
  • Enterprise tools: Jira, Slack, Zoom, Trello, Smartsheet
  • Government and finance platforms: GOV.UK, HMRC, Coinbase, Square
  • Streaming and media: Prime Video, IMDb, Tidal
  • E-commerce and cloud services: Amazon.com, AWS itself

How to check if you’re affected

  1. Check your own systems: If your website, app, or internal tools are hosted on AWS, monitor for latency, errors, or downtime.
  2. Use status dashboards:
  3. Review third-party dependencies: Many tools you use (e.g. Canva, Zoom, Slack) may be affected even if you don’t host on AWS directly.

What SMEs Can Do Right Now

If your business is impacted:

  • Communicate with customers: Let them know you’re aware of the issue and monitoring it.
  • Switch to backup systems: If you have local or alternative cloud backups, consider activating them.
  • Log incidents: Record what’s affected and for how long. This helps with future planning and any SLA claims.

If you’re not directly affected but rely on cloud services:

  • Monitor performance closely: Even indirect dependencies can cause slowdowns or errors.
  • Avoid major deployments or updates: Wait until the outage is resolved to avoid compounding issues.

What to do once the issue is resolved

Once AWS restores full service, SMEs should:

  1. Review the impact: What systems were affected? How long were they down? What was the business impact?
  2. Update your incident response documentation: Include this outage in your continuity planning.
  3. Talk to your IT provider or MSP: Discuss whether your current setup is resilient enough.

 

Need help planning for better resilience?

We support SMEs in building resilience against cloud outages and service disruptions through:

 

Stay Updated

We’ll continue monitoring the situation and will update this page as more information becomes available. If you’re a One2Call customer and need help assessing your exposure or planning your next steps, our team is here to support you.
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