Microsoft 365 remains 'degraded' as Azure outage resolved
Central US region is back in business but Office apps still in trouble
Updated Microsoft's 365 subscription services are down for some users, as the software titan also reports the Central US region of its Azure cloud is experiencing problems.
Azure's status page advises that since approximately 21:56 UTC on July 18 "a subset of customers may experience issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region including failures with service management operations and connectivity or availability of services."
As of 01:19 UTC on the 19th, the issue remains unresolved – but Microsofties are aware of the problem and are working on it.
Microsoft 365 (the artist formerly known as Office 365) is also down, and its status page warns that customers may not be able to access SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Teams, Intune, PowerBI, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Defender, and Viva Engage.
As of 01:30 UTC on July 19, the M365 status page advises "service availability is gradually returning to a healthy state following our traffic redirection efforts" and that Redmond has "identified a potential root cause that may have contributed to the impact. Our team is currently validating these findings and our mitigation strategy to ensure the issue is resolved as quickly as possible."
The Azure team has made less progress. Its most recent update – from 01:35 on July 19 – offers the following:
As part of the investigation, we have reviewed previous deployments. We've determined the underlying cause and are currently applying mitigation through multiple workstreams.
That sounds a lot like Microsoft broke its own cloud.
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The Central US region is located in Iowa and boasts three availability zones – meaning Microsoft operates three discrete physical facilities that are fewer than two milliseconds apart in terms of network connection speed. Like its hyperscale rivals, Microsoft promotes availability zones as improving resilience and enabling faster disaster recovery.
But that idea relies on at least one availability zone being available – right now all three are out.
Microsoft's Azure status page recommends "Customers with disaster recovery procedures set up can consider trying to take steps to failover their services to other regions, and may consider using programmatic options for this if they experience issues."
Such measures are precisely the thing that use of availability zones is supposed to obviate.
This is a developing story and The Register will update as we learn of changes to the situation. ®
Updated to add at 0530 UTC July 19
Microsoft now advises that the Central US region has resumed operations. Microsoft 365 remains in a degraded condition with many services unavailable to some users.