AWS Hit by Second Major Outage in Just 9 Days—And Microsoft Azure Crashed Too

| October 30, 2025

For the second time in less than two weeks, Amazon Web Services (AWS) faced a wave of outage reports—disrupting popular apps like Reddit, Slack, and Snapchat—even as the company insisted everything was “operating normally.”

The latest issues began around noon ET on Wednesday, October 29, with nearly 20,000 users reporting problems on outage-tracking site DownDetector. Most complaints came from the US-EAST-1 region—the same data center in Northern Virginia that failed during a 15-hour outage on October 20.

And to make things worse? Microsoft Azure also went down at the same time, affecting Microsoft 365, Xbox, Minecraft, and even services used by Starbucks, Costco, and Alaska Airlines.

 

What Happened?

AWS claimed there was no official outage, pointing users to its AWS Health Dashboard as the “only accurate source.” But that dashboard did show recent problems with key services like EC2 (used to run virtual servers) and Elastic Container Service in the US-EAST-1 region just one day earlier.

Meanwhile, Microsoft confirmed its outage was caused by a DNS failure in its Azure Front Door network—a system that helps deliver web content quickly around the world.

Why This Keeps Happening

The US-EAST-1 region is one of AWS’s oldest and busiest data centers. Because so many companies rely on it, a small problem there can cause big ripple effects across the internet.

The October 20 outage alone—caused by a failure in AWS’s DynamoDB database—lasted almost 15 hours and may have cost businesses over half a billion dollars in lost sales and productivity.

Now, with another disruption so soon after, experts are sounding the alarm.

“Even the most advanced cloud systems still have weak spots,” said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of internet monitoring company Catchpoint.
“Too many companies depend on just one or two cloud providers—and that’s risky.”

Why Should You Care?

Because you’ve probably used a service that runs on AWS or Azure today—whether it’s ordering coffee, checking Reddit, or logging into work apps. When these cloud giants stumble, the whole internet feels it.

AWS alone powers over 30% of the global cloud market. That kind of dominance brings efficiency—but also danger if things go wrong.

What’s Next?

These back-to-back outages are sparking new conversations about diversifying cloud use and building more backup systems. For now, millions of businesses—and everyday users—remain at the mercy of a few massive tech infrastructures.

As one developer put it on social media:

“We don’t just use the internet anymore. We use AWS… and hope it doesn’t break.”