Two major cloud service providers experienced simultaneous outages last night, causing significant disruptions for users. Both Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure encountered disruptions on Wednesday evening, affecting users accessing various key websites and apps such as Microsoft 365, Outlook, Starbucks, and Asda.
Gamers were also affected, with reported outages on Xbox and Minecraft. Users on DownDetector, a website monitoring online outages, reported issues throughout the day with services like Office 365, Minecraft, Xbox Live, Copilot, Costco, and Starbucks.
Alaska Airlines mentioned that the outage affected their systems, particularly impacting check-in services. Air New Zealand warned of travel delays due to the inability to process payments or digital boarding passes. The outage also took down websites for New Zealand’s police and parliament.
The Azure outage, which was quite lengthy, appears to have been resolved. Microsoft’s dashboard indicated no active incidents as of Wednesday evening, with engineers deploying fixes to address the disruptions affecting travel sites, consumer apps, and gaming services.
Microsoft stated that the issue with Azure was expected to be resolved by 23:20 UTC on the same day. The company reported signs of improvement in affected regions and anticipated full mitigation soon.
As the Azure issue was being addressed, some websites started to come back online. Microsoft assured that services were gradually returning to normal.
Microsoft Azure is a global cloud platform that serves as a critical infrastructure for various companies’ services and websites. The outage impacted Microsoft’s popular tools like PowerPoint, Word, and Excel, along with over 200 other services crucial for running apps and websites.
Microsoft provided updates on resolving the Azure issue, stating that the ‘last known good’ configuration had been implemented, with signs of recovery becoming visible to customers. The company expected full mitigation within the next few hours.
The outage affected several major companies reliant on Azure and AWS servers, leading to disruptions in various services. The Scottish Parliament had to suspend operations due to internet-related issues impacting its online voting system.
Microsoft identified an inadvertent configuration change as the cause of the Azure disruption, taking actions to rectify the issue and prevent reoccurrence. The company assured customers of ongoing efforts to restore services.
Overall, the outages with AWS and Azure had widespread impacts, affecting millions of users globally. The tech firms continued to work diligently to address the disruptions and restore normal operations.