To all eClass users,

Over the past two weeks we have had untimely and impactful interruptions in eClass and some of the related tools that eClass provides. The interruptions on December 7th and 15th were caused by outages in Amazon Web Services (East and West Zones) ; those interruptions were outside of our control. However, the outages on the 20th, 21st and 22nd were within our scope.

We understand that these outages have caused a lot of unnecessary and added stress and extra work resulting in frustration and anger for our instructors, students, and staff. For that we are deeply sorry. We are also aware that an apology brings little solace to those that were impacted but one is absolutely required regardless.

The outages that eClass has experienced this week are the result of complex issues that do not have a readily apparent root cause and continue to be under investigation. What we do know is that prior to the exams starting, a load on the database triggered the eClass database to fail but this only happened during the afternoon sessions. The root cause is not evident in the logs or in our tests and similar (and higher) database loads at different intervals of the exam period did not cause loss of service. The teams in IST are continuing to work on and investigate the issue and outside vendors have been engaged to help with the diagnosis and resolution of this issue.

With the start of term for Winter 2022 moving fully online, we understand how important it is for eClass to be a reliable platform for online delivery. Our teams will continue to work to restore the reliability of eClass in preparation for the start of term and exam periods in the months to come.

Regards,

IST eClass Support