Two major cloud service providers faced simultaneous outages, leading to significant disruptions for users last night.
Both Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure encountered issues on Wednesday evening, affecting users of various key websites and applications such as Microsoft 365, Outlook, Starbucks, and Asda.
Gamers also experienced disruptions with outages reported on Xbox and Minecraft.
DownDetector, a platform monitoring online outages, received reports from users throughout the day regarding problems with Office 365, Minecraft, Xbox Live, Copilot, Costco, Starbucks, and other services.
Alaska Airlines mentioned on its social media account that the outage was causing problems within their systems, including check-in services.
Air New Zealand, the national carrier, issued warnings of travel delays due to the inability to process payments or digital boarding passes. Notably, websites for New Zealand’s police and parliament were among those affected by the outage.
Fortunately, the outage has since been resolved.
The extended Azure downtime seems to have concluded, with a Microsoft dashboard indicating no active incidents as of Wednesday evening.
Previously, the same portal showed technicians deploying fixes to address issues with the cloud service, which affected travel sites, consumer applications, and gaming services.
Microsoft anticipated resolving the Azure issue by 23:20 UTC on the same day, reporting positive progress and expressing confidence in achieving full mitigation.
While the Microsoft Azure problem was being addressed, some websites started to return online.
Majorly impacted websites today included services from Microsoft, with Azure and associated tools like Powerpoint, Word, and Excel experiencing disruptions.
Azure, being a pivotal global cloud platform, underpins services and websites for both Microsoft and numerous other companies. It offers over 200 essential services including storage, computing, and networking.
Microsoft provided updates on their efforts to rectify the Azure issue, highlighting the deployment of the ‘last known good’ configuration and ongoing recovery efforts.
The outage’s repercussions spread to various sectors, with the Scottish Parliament suspending operations due to connectivity issues affecting their online voting system, possibly linked to the Microsoft outage.
Microsoft acknowledged the cause of the significant Azure disruption, attributing it to an inadvertent configuration change. They detailed steps taken to mitigate the impact and restore services for customers.
Heathrow Airport’s website also faced challenges amid the widespread internet outage, affecting various crucial webpages.
Several major companies utilizing Azure and AWS servers reported experiencing outages, further emphasizing the widespread impact of the disruption.
In an effort to address the outage, Microsoft shared updates on the Azure issue, outlining actions taken to resolve the problem and provide recovery updates to affected users.
The outage incidents underscore the critical reliance on cloud services provided by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, highlighting the vulnerability posed by such outages due to the consolidation of resources into a few major players in the cloud service industry.