An early-morning outage left students and faculty unable to access course materials for much of Monday before systems were restored by evening.
Photo Credit: Google Gemini & Canvas
By: Nicolas Scola
At approximately 10 AM on October 20, 2025, Instructure’s Canvas, Penn’s preferred learning management system, began experiencing technical difficulties as a result of an Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that started around 3:11 AM EST.
At 11:33 AM EST, Penn Canvas issued an update that “Gradescope, iThenticate, Turnitin, and PollEverywhere are now working” and that there is an ongoing effort to fix Canvas.
As of 7 PM EST, the issue appears to be resolved.
It is unclear why AWS crashed earlier today, but it is speculated that services utilizing AWS were unable to access Amazon’s DynamoDB, the company’s “serverless, fully managed, distributed NoSQL database,” due to an issue with its Domain Name System (DNS), which translates the names of websites into IP addresses.
According to Mike Chapple, Faculty Director of the Business Administration in Computer Science Program at Notre Dame, “Amazon had the data safely stored, but nobody else could find it for several hours, leaving apps temporarily separated from their data.”
As of 3:33 PM EST, Amazon reported that its systems are effectively back online; however, 395 companies are still currently affected by the outage, with more than 11 million service reports filed.
Course work and classes at Penn were not cancelled as a result of the issue. Some professors across campus adapted by sending class materials to students via email and, in a few reported circumstances, by postponing assignments and moving exams from Canvas to paper.
Penn has recovered quickly from previous large scale technology outages, acting with precision following the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, which caused millions of Microsoft Windows computers around the world to crash. The University’s Information Systems and Computing Department, responsible for ensuring the integrity of the IT infrastructure on campus, has not issued a statement on the matter.
Nicolas Scola is a Junior in Wharton and the College from Morristown, NJ. Nicolas is also the Executive Editor for The Pennsylvania Post. His email is nscola@wharton.upenn.edu.
