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The outage ledger

Every major Microsoft outage we've logged, newest first. What fell over, how long for, and what Microsoft said about it. Dates are Australian east coast time.

0 days since the last one. Best run on this ledger: 294 days.

  1. More than 5 hours, and still counting when this was posted

    Friday the 13th

    Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, Copilot and Defender XDR, for users in any region.

    Microsoft said a number of its servers had become "unexpectedly unavailable".

    Defender is the security product. The guard dog passed out with the rest of the house. Third Friday on this board.

    Source: BleepingComputer

  2. Close to 10 hours

    The ten-hour sick day

    Outlook, Defender and Purview.

    Microsoft blamed a slice of its North American infrastructure that had stopped processing traffic properly.

    The Register suggested renaming the product Microsoft 364.5.

    Source: The Register

  3. A bit over 8 hours

    The earnings-day special

    Azure Front Door, and with it Microsoft 365, Xbox, Minecraft and a long list of airlines, banks and retailers.

    Microsoft put it down to an "inadvertent configuration change".

    It landed a few hours before Microsoft's quarterly earnings call. Still 29 October in Redmond.

    Source: The Stack

  4. Somewhere between 11 and 21 hours, depending on who you ask

    Outlook takes the day off

    Outlook on the web, mobile and desktop, worldwide.

    Microsoft pointed at its mailbox infrastructure, shipped a fix, found a problem with the fix, and shipped another one.

    Source: The Register

  5. About 33 hours

    The two-day Monday

    Exchange Online, Teams calendars, Outlook and friends.

    Microsoft traced it to a recent change it had made, then spent the next day and a half taking it back.

    Source: Pingdom

  6. Days, for the people rebooting machines by hand

    The big one

    About 8.5 million Windows machines. Supermarket checkouts, banks, airlines and newsrooms across Australia.

    A bad CrowdStrike update pulled the trigger. Windows was the gun.

    Macs and Linux machines running CrowdStrike kept working.

    Source: Wikipedia

Know one we've missed? Tell us and it goes on the ledger.

Six things to do before the next one

There will be a next one. Ten minutes this arvo saves you a morning of watching a circle spin.

  • Write down ten phone numbers The ten people you'd need to reach if email died. Put them somewhere outside Outlook. A sticky note counts.
  • Start a team group chat Signal or WhatsApp. Set it up today, while you can still email everyone the invite.
  • Keep a spare email address One address outside Microsoft that your key clients already know about.
  • Export your calendar every week Friday afternoon, before the pub. Friday has form.
  • Save this week's files to your computer The actual computer. The files you'd need tomorrow morning.
  • Bookmark status.cloud.microsoft It's where Microsoft confirms what you already know.