Huge Microsoft outage hit 365, Xbox, and beyond — deployment of fix for Azure breakdown rolled out

Well we're back again folks, another AWS outage has just hit the airwaves, according to reports from Downdetector in the US and the UK, as well as online on platforms like X. Stay tuned as we keep you updated with what's going on.

The latest reports indicate that AWS is indeed down somewhere. This is exactly the kind of Downdetector spike we'd expect to see when something goes wrong with AWS, with services affected roughly mirroring the previous outage, which happened just a few days ago.

No word from Amazon

With the outage in its very early stages, there's no word from AWS's Service Health web page to denote any issues. Ironically, the latest update is for the resolution of the catastrophic outage AWS suffered just a couple of days ago.

Affected services in the UK

In the UK, users are reporting a huge swathe of outage on multiple services that rely on AWS for their infrastructure. Here's a list of the biggest ones so far:

• Microsoft Azure
• Minecraft
• Microsoft 365
• Xbox
• Microsoft Store
• BT
• AWS
• Asda
• Outlook
• NatWest
• EE
• Nationwide
• O2
• Microsoft Teams
• Whatsapp
• VUE
• Sainsbury's
• John Lewis
• RBS
• Google
• Google Cloud

U.S. affected services

A similar number of services, including massive names, are likewise affected in the U.S.:

• Microsoft Azure
• Microsoft 365
• Minecraft
• AWS
• Capital One
• Microsoft Store
• Xbox
• Starbucks
• Outlook
• Costco
• Google Cloud
• Xfinity by Comcast
• Zoom

What causes an AWS outage?

You might be wondering how a large part of the internet can just suddenly break. So what causes an AWS outage? Well fortunately we have an example from... *checks notes* four days ago to call upon. Turns out the root cause of the most recent issue was that the DNS configuration for database service DynamoDB was broken and published to Route53, a DNS service. That cascaded to EC2, a virtual machine service.

Still nothing from Amazon...

With the outage seemingly increasing in scope, there's still no update to the AWS Health Dashboard as it stands...

Microsoft Azure the culprit

Turns out early speculation of an AWS outage may have been misplaced, as an ongoing Microsoft Azure outage appears to be to blame for current internet troubles. Microsoft's Azure page states:

Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing Azure Front Door issues resulting in a loss of availability of some services. In addition, customers may experience issues accessing the Azure Portal. Customers can attempt to use programmatic methods (PowerShell, CLI, etc.) to access/utilize resources if they are unable to access the portal directly. We have failed the portal away from Azure Front Door (AFD) to attempt to mitigate the portal access issues and are continuing to assess the situation.

We are actively assessing failover options of internal services from our AFD infrastructure. Our investigation into the contributing factors and additional recovery workstreams continues. More information will be provided within 60 minutes or sooner.

This message was last updated at 17:04 UTC on 29 October 2025

Desperately bad timing

Microsoft is hosting its quarterly earnings call today, which makes this Azure outage especially galling for the folks at Redmond. Much like AWS, Azure is one of a number of critical infrastructure products that underpins much of the internet as we know it. Hence an outage of this nature has such a large knock-on effect.

Azure outage is 'non-regional'

Microsoft says that the ongoing Azure portal issue is non-regional, so there's no telling at this stage how widespread the impact of the outage could be. Safe to say it isn't limited to one particular geography.

X update for customers

More like Microsoft 364...

Microsoft 365 has confirmed that as a result of the ongoing Azure issue, it's 365 services are currently having. It says that it has identified internal infrastructure having connectivity issues and is "unblocking these systems and redistributing traffic to support recovery, as we continue our work to reroute affected traffic to restore service health."

Xbox outage

If you were hoping to jump on Xbox later to try out the new Battlefield 6 Battle Royale mode, then I've got bad news, this Xbox outage is almost certainly going to have a knock-on effect when it comes to joining parties and gaming while it's ongoing. Indeed, there's a huge Downdetector spike on Minecraft denoting an outage, too.

Alaska Airlines affected

Alaska Airlines has confirmed that it is one of the key technology partners affected by the ongoing Azure issues. "Due to a global outage impacting the Microsoft Azure platform where several Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines services are hosted, we are currently experiencing a disruption to key systems, including our websites. In coordination with our technology partners, our teams are actively working to restore services as quickly as possible," the company said.

"For our guests who are unable to check-in online due to the Microsoft Azure outage, please see an agent at the airport for a boarding pass, and allow for some extra time in the lobby. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we navigate this issue."

The scale of the outage:

Microsoft has confirmed that Azure is suffering 'Critical' issues in every region it serves:

• East US
• East US 2
• Central US
• North Central US
• South Central US
• West Central US
• West US
• West US 2
• West US 3
• Canada East
• Canada Central
• Brazil South
• Brazil Southeast
• Mexico Central
• Chile Central
• North Europe
• West Europe
• France Central
• France South
• UK West
• UK South
• Switzerland North
• Switzerland West
• Norway East
• Norway West
• Germany North
• Germany West Central
• Sweden Central
• Sweden South
• Poland Central
• Italy North
• Spain Central
• Austria east
• Belgium Central
• Southeast Asia
• East Asia
• Australia East
• Australia Southeast
• Australia Central
• Australia Central 2
• Central India
• West India South India
• Japan East
• Japan West
• Korea Central
• Korea Zouth
• New Zealand North
• Malaysia West
• South Africa West
• South Africa North
• UAE Central
• UAE North
• Qatar Central
• Israel Central
• Jio India West
• Jio India Central

Maybe just say "everywhere" next time, Microsoft.

Looks like we found the culprit!

Maybe not... still funny though.

Get in touch:

Impacted by the outage? Drop me an email at stephen.warwick@futurenet.com - tell me where you are and how the outage is affecting you.

Update from Microsoft:

Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing Azure Front Door (AFD) issues resulting in a loss of availability of some services. We suspect that an inadvertent configuration change as the trigger event for this issue.

We are taking several concurrent actions: Firstly, where we are blocking all changes to the AFD services, this includes customer configuration changes as well. At the same time, we are rolling back our AFD configuration to our last known good state. As we rollback we want to ensure that the problematic configuration doesn't re-initiate upon recovery.

Customers may have experienced problems accessing the Azure management portal. We have failed the portal away from AFD to mitigate the portal access issues. Customers should be able to access the Azure management portal directly, while all portal extensions are working correctly there may be a small number of endpoints that might have a problem loading (i.e. Marketplace).

We do not have an ETA for when the rollback will be completed, but we will update this communication within 30 minutes or when we have an update.

One outage, many outcomes

A quick glance at Downdetector reveals just how many facets of the internet rely on critical cloud infrastructure that can fail at a moment's notice. Also, the variety of outcomes is quite something. For instance, Minecraft users are reporting issues connecting to servers, while BT customers in the UK can't use their emails, and for those doing online grocery shopping, it's websites that are failing. Trying to grab your coffee? The Starbucks app is down.

Force of habit?

The internet broke and hundreds of you rushed to Downdetector to report that AWS wasn't working, which says a lot about how Amazon Web Services has become synonymous with the workings (and the not-workings) of the internet in recent years.

Outage update from Microsoft: Scope grows

Microsoft has confirmed that the outage is a 'Critical' incident across all of the aforementioned regions for both Azure Front door and Network Infrastructure.

Microsoft remedy:

Microsoft has confirmed it doesn't have an ETA for a resolution to the outage, but has one support pointer for affected customers.

While we dont have an ETA yet. customers can consider implementing failover strategies with Azure Traffic Manager, to fail over from Azure Front Door to your origins: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/guide/networking/global-web-applications/overview

Your stories:

One reader who wished to remain anonymous has been in touch to confirm they're a tech lead on the implementation team for "one of the big payroll providers." The Azure/365 outage has hit internal workflows. "It’s a great time with our client’s processing payroll," they remarked sarcastically. An end-of-the-month crunch that's for sure!

A terrible time to set up a laptop...

Reader Christopher from Palm Beach, Florida, has been in touch to confirm that the ongoing outage has made it impossible to set up his new Lenovo Yoga 9i Pro. "I couldn’t sign into my Microsoft account. The sign-in screen kept loading endlessly and never reached the password prompt," he tells me.

Turns out Christopher is on his third Windows laptop in a week as he tries to pry himself away from his M1 Pro MacBook Pro. "I initially tried the Zenbook S16, but returned it because the speakers sounded terrible and the device felt too light and flimsy. Then I got the Lenovo Legion, which was powerful but too bulky for my needs — and again, the speakers were disappointing," buying advice to live by if anyone needs it.

"So when the Yoga 9i Pro started acting up during setup, I almost rushed back to Best Buy in a panic, thinking it was a sign I shouldn’t be switching to Windows at all." Thankfully, Christopher now knows that the Azure outage is to blame, so don't return it just yet!

An all too common occurence?

Per Microsoft's own status history, today's outage would mark the third Azure incident in October alone, and the second related to Azure Front Door.

On October 9 AFD experienced issued in Africa, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East. However, impact was fairly minimal. An Azure portal outage on the same day impacted approximately 45% of customers .

More stories...

Another email: Abbey is a database manager for a nonprofit in Denver, who tells me they're unable to access Raiser's Edge NXT. "Hoping for a quick solution!"

Microsoft starts rolling out a fix

And just like that, Microsoft is working on a fix:

"We have initiated the deployment of our 'last known good' configuration. This is expected to be fully deployed in about 30 minutes from which point customers will start to see initial signs of recovery. Once this is completed, the next stage is to start to recover nodes while we route traffic through these healthy nodes.

Customer configuration changes will remain blocked during this time as we work towards mitigation. We will communicate to customers when this block is reverted.

Customers may have experienced problems accessing the Azure management portal. We have failed the portal away from AFD to mitigate the portal access issues. Customers should be able to access the Azure management portal directly, while all portal extensions are working correctly there may be a small number of endpoints that might have a problem loading (i.e. Marketplace).

We do not have an ETA for full mitigation, we will update this communication within 30 minutes, once the deployment is completed.

Customers can consider implementing failover strategies with Azure Traffic Manager, to fail over from Azure Front Door to your origins."

A valid point...

One anonymous reader has emailed in to empathise with the plight of the aforementioned Christopher and his beleagured Lenovo. "The fact that Microsoft now requires an online account during the Windows setup process is ridiculous," the write. "If their servers are down or you don’t have internet access, you’re forced to use workarounds just to create a local account. It really makes a strong case for switching to Linux or another operating system that still respects user choice and allows local accounts." Can't say I disagree.

Update from Microsoft:

Current status:

We have initiated the deployment of our last known good configuration, which is expected to complete within 30 minutes. As this deployment progresses, customers should begin to see initial signs of recovery. Once completed, we will begin recovering nodes and routing traffic through these healthy nodes.

Customer configuration changes will remain temporarily blocked while we continue mitigation efforts. We will notify customers once this block has been lifted.

Some customers may also have experienced issues accessing the Azure management portal. We have failed the portal away from AFD to mitigate these access issues. Customers should now be able to access the Azure portal directly, and while most portal extensions are functioning as expected, a small number of endpoints (e.g., Marketplace) may still experience intermittent loading problems.

We do not yet have an ETA for full mitigation, but we will provide another update within 30 minutes, once the deployment has completed.

Customers may also consider implementing failover strategies using Azure Traffic Manager to redirect traffic from Azure Front Door to their origin servers as an interim measure.

This message was last updated at 18:24 UTC on 29 October 2025

As you can see that's pretty great news, and a promising sign that Microsoft is on its way to restoring normal service.

Tweets posted moments before disaster:

Functionality slowly returning...

Our anonymous payroll tech from earlier has confirmed that system access is slowly being restored as Microsoft rolls out its fix.

"Resilience gaps are still widespread across even the most advanced infrastructures."

Tom's Hardware spoke to Catchpoint owner and CEO Mehdi Daoudi about the ongoing outage:

"An AWS disruption last week, Microsoft Azure this week, and I have no doubt another Fortune 100 will be hit next week. Resilience gaps are still widespread across even the most advanced infrastructures. The Azure outage appears to have taken down not only core services but also DNS and CDN layers, rendering many dependent tools, like session recording and analytics platforms, completely unreachable. We saw the failure instantly in our benchmarks, with every layer, websites, applications, DNS, and CDNs going red at once," he says. "Outages like this can cost industries tens of millions of dollars in just a few hours of downtime. It’s a major reminder that the Internet’s interdependencies mean a single misconfiguration or network-edge change, such as an issue on the AFD side, can ripple rapidly across services that power millions of users worldwide. The bottom line is that resilience must become a boardroom conversation, or these prolonged and costly outages will continue to take place."

Microsoft earnings back on?

Hopefully with a fix starting to roll out and some normal service resuming, Microsoft can host its earnings call this evening and pretend like nothing ever happened.