BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) \u2014 Students and faculty at different schools across the county experienced disruptions after the schools\u2019 learning platform, Canvas, went down. But the problem isn\u2019t just local \u2014 it’s part of a much bigger issue affecting users across the country.<\/p>\n
Students and faculty at Cal State Bakersfield and Bakersfield College faced disruptions Monday when Amazon Web Services \u2014 or AWS \u2014 went down. In turn, that caused the Canvas learning platform to also fail.<\/p>\n
Officials at both schools say they\u2019re monitoring the situation, and students are being asked to check with their professors for any course updates or deadline changes.<\/p>\n
Chris Diniz is the vice president, and chief information officer, at CSUB and he says, \u201cThere\u2019s a nationwide outage with Amazon Web Services, better known in the tech industry as AWS. They are impacting a number of cloud services that include Canvas and other types of instructional materials \u2014 including e-readers that students use to access electronic books.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students at CSUB tell me that even with Canvas being down, some teachers had to come up with alternative ways to keep class moving.<\/p>\n
Nubia Hernandez is a junior, studying electrical engineering at CSUB and she says, \u201cI had two classes this morning, but Canvas wasn\u2019t operating, so we didn\u2019t do much work… The alternative was to go on paper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bakersfield College sent 23ABC this statement, which reads in part:
\u201cBakersfield College is aware of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage and has communicated with students and faculty about the outage and strategies to minimize impact to instruction. We are working with our IT department to monitor the situation and will update the campus community as additional information becomes available.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amazon also sent us a statement that says, in part:
\u201cWe are working to fully restore service as quickly as possible. This issue has also impacted Amazon.com and Amazon subsidiaries, as well as AWS customer service support operations.\u201dThe company added that on October 20th, just after midnight, Amazon Web Services began experiencing technical problems in its Northern Virginia data center.<\/p>\n
The issue involved DNS \u2014 a system that helps online platforms find and connect to servers. It affected multiple services including Canvas, Amazon.com, and even AWS’s own customer support systems. AWS said the main issue was fixed by 2:24 a.m., but some services \u2014 including those that power virtual computers \u2014 are still being restored.<\/p>\n
As for students, many say they\u2019re concerned about what this means for submitting assignments \u2014 and they\u2019re hoping professors will offer deadline extensions.<\/p>\n