Analysis of Recent AWS Outages (October & November 2025)

The internet experienced significant disruption due to two separate incidents originating from Amazon's infrastructure in late 2025.

1. November 2025 Outage (Primary Impact: Amazon.com)

• Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2025 (reports surged shortly after 6:30 pm ET).
   

• Primary Affected Service: Amazon's core e-commerce platform (Amazon.com).
   

• Impact: Thousands of users, primarily in major U.S. metropolitan areas (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit), reported issues. The most common problems were related to the checkout process and the functionality of shopping carts, leaving customers unable to complete purchases just weeks before the busy holiday season.
   

• Cause: Amazon did not immediately issue an official statement regarding the cause of this specific malfunction. An AWS spokesperson claimed at the time that core AWS services were operating normally, suggesting the issue was contained to the consumer-facing retail platform rather than the broader cloud infrastructure.

2. October 2025 Outage (Primary Impact: AWS Cloud Services)

The November incident came on the heels of a much more severe, major cloud outage:

• Date: Monday, October 20, 2025.
   

• Affected Region: Primarily US-EAST-1 (Northern Virginia), AWS's oldest and most critical region.
   

• Duration: Lasted a significant 15 hours, labeled by experts as Amazon's worst outage since 2021.
   

• Core Services Disrupted: Core AWS services like DynamoDB (database), EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (storage), and Lambda were impacted, resulting in massive cascading failures.
   

• Global Impact: Crippled hundreds of client companies and popular services worldwide, including Snapchat, Apple, Epic Games, Coinbase, Reddit, and various financial and government portals.
   

• Root Cause: AWS later attributed the October incident to a "latent race condition" in the DynamoDB DNS management system. This specific technical fault caused two automated systems to update the same data simultaneously, resulting in an empty DNS record that prevented servers from routing traffic correctly.

These events underscore the internet's reliance on centralized cloud providers and highlight the danger of cascading failures. Even a single technical defect in a critical underlying system can create ripple effects that disrupt essential digital services across the globe.

High-Priority AWS Outage Preparation Checklist

To gain a competitive edge, preparation must begin now, focusing on data, cloud resilience, and talent.

1. The Data Strategy: Secure Your Moat

• Actionable Step: Stop treating data as a byproduct. Immediately establish a formal process for structuring, tagging, and curating proprietary, Vietnamese-centric datasets (e.g., specific dialects, local regulatory documents).
   

• Why it Prepares You: This allows you to fine-tune powerful global APIs more effectively than anyone else, delivering a superior, differentiated product that is insulated from pure scale competition.

2. The Cloud Resilience Strategy: Decentralize NOW

• Actionable Step: Mandate a Multi-Cloud/Hybrid Architecture policy for all new projects. Utilize Vietnamese cloud providers or multiple global zones to ensure redundancy and avoid relying solely on the vulnerable mega-cloud giants.
   

• Why it Prepares You: This pre-empts catastrophic service interruption, positioning your company as a risk-aware partner who can offer clients robust, decentralized solutions.

3. The Talent Strategy: Skill-Shift Budget

• Actionable Step: Shift a fixed percentage of the budget toward AI Literacy and Prompt Engineering Certifications for all technical staff. Focus training on API integration and AI System Architecture.
   

• Why it Prepares You: You are preparing for a future where engineers are valued for their judgment and design expertise over manual coding speed, ensuring your human capital remains valuable when basic tasks are automated.