Azure services fall over in Europe, Microsoft works on fix

Microsoft's Azure portal and some related products are down right now for unlucky customers. The Windows giant is said to be working on a fix to bring systems back online. The US tech titan warned on its status page that there are "issues accessing the Azure portal and other Microsoft services," and said it is "applying …

[Eclectic Man]

A 'transient issue'

"We have identified a transient issue impacting a backend service and we are actively scaling out our backend resources to mitigate the issue."

Well, thank goodness it isn't a permanent issue.

And let's hope that the issue they have identified is the only one adversely affecting the service.

[Brian Miller]

Re: A 'transient issue'

Maybe a squirrel got into something. Literally. Again.

[chivo243]

Re: A 'transient issue'

I thought a transient issue was when you had vagrants hopping your fence to avoid capture?

Right behind them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A 'transient issue'

A "transient issue" is the baby they leave behind on your door step. Do you just hope the problem will go away by itself, or walkaround the issue, or consider it a new feature and build it into your plans?

[thondwe]

Re: A 'transient issue'

Reminds me of the Monkey causing powercuts in Malawi by getting into a transformer building!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A 'transient issue'

"and we are actively scaling out our backend resources to mitigate the issue."

In other words, an enema ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A 'transient issue'

Doesn't that imply they are full of shite then?

In which case I'd probably agree with you.....

[Ken Moorhouse]

...And they are thinking of using Azure in battlefield tech

https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/20/azure_ball_aerospace_demo/

[FuzzyTheBear]

Re: ...And they are thinking of using Azure in battlefield tech

Scary ain't it ? :D

[Danny Boyd]

Re: ...And they are thinking of using Azure in battlefield tech

Well, if there is ever such a thing as battlefield, it is. But then again, if there is such a thing as real battlefield (in present state of the armaments), the cloud technologies won't be the first concern.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: ...And they are thinking of using Azure in battlefield tech

It will certainly make the next 'Terminator' film more comedic.

(Austrian farmer / Arnie voice):

"I'll be ... "

'Abort, Retry, Fail?'

'Your computer operating system is being upgraded by Microsoft, please be patient'

'Downloading 783 of 937294627Mb'

'Do not turn off your computer during the update'

(Some hours later)

"... back."

But I guess it will give us meatbags a chance.

[fidodogbreath]

It's always DNS.

[b0llchit]

Yes, indeed. The Do Not Stumble-bit was cleared in the last update. The machines were under the impression that it was OK to take a break and try to get a better pay for the electrons passing through them. In that process, some electrons took a wrong turn and made a little mess. Mopping the floor took some time before all started to flow smoothly again.

[PandyH]

That’s two outages today

That’s twice today. First outage was around 8am and several MS services were dodgy for about an hour.

This morning it affected the Azure portal, Visual Studio Online (my.visualstudio.com) and docs.microsoft.com.

This afternoon I only noticed the Azure portal falling over.

Both times was DNS-related - the name couldn’t be resolved.

[Peter-Waterman1]

Re: That’s two outages today

You should move to AWS…

[Anonymous Coward]

"Azure's DNS backend is said to be suffering, meaning people can't access websites relying on Microsoft's technology."

Did Microsoft recently hire someone with DNS experience from Salesforce?

[DJV]

Yeah, but he only had experience in "turning it off." They are now looking for someone whose skills include "turning it back on again."

[Locomotion69]

Can I have a copy? Please?

"We have identified a transient issue impacting a backend service and we are actively scaling out our backend resources to mitigate the issue."

I am dying to receive a copy of the software capable in generating this kind of sentences - event politicians cannot be this vague...

[DJV]

Re: generating this kind of sentences

amanfrommars is obviously moonlighting for them.

[cyberdemon]

> One of these days we'll automate these outage articles with some kind of AI

Oh yes just train up a generative text model in Azure AI Cloud ... Oh wait

[Anonymous Coward]

"some customers may begin to"

SOME.

MAY.

They have lots of confidence then! (Justified, I guess)

[fairwinds]

DDoS

Is it just me, or does this smell like a DDoS. A lot of it goong around, at the moment. It would explain their use of “transient” and also explain why “scaling out” would resolve the issue.

[TimMaher]

Re: DDoS

I was wondering that @fair.

It does have that sort of fingerprint.

Have a “got there first” beer and it’s Friday.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: DDoS

Are you trying to say that azure doesn’t use its own £2500 a month DDOS plan, which they turned on for free on my account (and then quietly charged me for 3 months for??)

[saabpilot]

Blue sky's No Clouds

[Danny Boyd]

What else did you expect...

... from a cloud? Cloud is a twin brother of outsourcing: you push your problem out to become SEP ("somebody else's problem"), and you feel happy and unburdened until you realise you've got no control over the situation anymore.

[hoola]

Re: What else did you expect...

But according to manglement it is the future. There is a complete hissy-fit about reliance on a VM on -rem that "might" not be available yet they could not give a stuff if the entire Azure implementation is unavailable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we stop being surprised yet?

Unlike the other big 2 cloud providers, MS made them a cloud to "be a cloud provider". The other two were already doing this stuff as the core of the internal technical operations. No one should be surprised that Azure is flaky given that.

[Missing Semicolon]

How many 9's is that?

One??