Microsoft Azure customers face widespread service disruptions due to configuration change, affecting Xbox, Alaska Airlines and Costco websites
WASHINGTON: Microsoft cloud customers experienced widespread service disruptions on Wednesday following an inadvertent configuration change affecting the Azure service.
The technical issue began at 1600 GMT and impacted Azure Front Door, the company’s content delivery network service used by enterprise clients to optimise application performance.
Microsoft provided an update at 2230 GMT confirming deployment of its last known good configuration while warning users about potential intermittent failures during system recovery.
The company observed strong signs of improvement across affected regions and expected Azure operations to return to normal by 2320 GMT.
DownDetector reported problems across numerous customer-facing websites including Xbox, Alaska Airlines and retailer Costco.
Configuration changes represent routine technology operations that companies implement constantly to enhance services or address issues.
Even minor configuration errors can cascade through interconnected systems and spread rapidly to cloud customers worldwide.
Microsoft explained it was recovering nodes and rerouting traffic through healthy nodes across its entire fleet.
This recovery process involved reloading configurations and rebalancing traffic across numerous nodes to restore full operational scale.
Last week witnessed a separate outage in Amazon’s crucial AWS cloud network that took popular internet services offline for hours.
AWS maintains leadership in the cloud computing market followed closely by Microsoft Azure with Google Cloud occupying third position.
Businesses, governments and consumers worldwide depend on this infrastructure for their online activities. – AFP
