Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing service run by Amazon, said its services are back to operating as usual after an outage caused widespread issues across the internet on Oct. 20.

AWS said the outage, which began around 3 a.m. ET on Oct. 20, was rooted in a series of issues in its US-EAST-1 Region, a cluster of data centers based in Northern Virginia.

AWS said it fixed the initial problem by 6 a.m. ET. However, a ripple effect of other issues caused service disruptions throughout the day. All services returned to normal by 6 p.m. ET, AWS said.

According to Downdetector, an outage-tracking website, large platforms including Amazon, Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite and more faced issues during the outage. More than three million users in the United States reported problems, Downdetector said.

Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement to USA TODAY that the incident is a reminder of the world's dependency on a handful of cloud service providers, including AWS.

"When a major cloud provider sneezes, the Internet catches a cold," Chapple said.

Is AWS still down?

As of 6 p.m. ET on Oct. 20, AWS said all its services "returned to normal operations," according to a statement on its service health page.

For a few hours after, some AWS services, such as AWS Config, Redshift and Connect would "continue to have a backlog of messages that they will finish processing," AWS said.

Which websites were impacted by the AWS outage?

A variety of websites, from social networking to banking platforms, reported issues during the AWS outage.

Some schools and universities around the country faced issues because of an outage with Canvas, a learning management platform.

"We recognize the integral role Canvas plays in the daily lives of educators and students, serving as a central hub for teaching and learning, and we know today’s AWS outage had a significant impact on that experience," Canvas said in a statement after service was restored.

According to Downdetector, the following websites are among those that experienced significant spikes in outage reports through Monday afternoon:

  • Amazon
  • Apple Music
  • AT&T
  • Blink Security
  • Chime
  • Fanduel
  • Fortnite
  • Life360
  • Lyft
  • McDonald's
  • Ring
  • Roblox
  • Roku
  • Snapchat
  • Starbucks
  • Venmo
  • Verizon
  • YouTube
  • Zoom

What caused the AWS outage?

According to AWS, the outage stemmed from an issue with DynamoDB, a serverless database.

Chapple said DynamoDB is a record-keeper that helps track user information and store key data.

While AWS has not yet released a detailed summary of the event, early reports indicate that the outage wasn't caused by the database itself. Rather, it appears that something went wrong with the records that tell other systems where to find their data, Chapple said.

"Amazon had the data safely stored, but nobody else could find it for several hours, leaving apps temporarily separated from their data," Chapple said. "It’s as if large portions of the Internet suffered temporary amnesia."

Melina Khan is a national trending reporter for USA TODAY. She can be reached at melina.khan@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: An AWS outage impacted your favorite websites. It's now been resolved.

Reporting by Melina Khan, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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