Microsoft apologises after thousands report new outage(bbc.co.uk)
bbc.co.uk
Microsoft apologises after thousands report new outage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c903e793w74o
59 comments
How is this “another” Microsoft outage? I assume the first outage the article is referring to was the crowdstrike issue (not a Microsoft caused issue).
Or perhaps I’m not aware of a different non-crowdstrike Microsoft outage recently?
The day before crowdstrike a bunch of Azure services were down in us-central-1 and devops was down globally AFAIK
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41000822
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41000822
Yesterday portal.azure.com wasn't reachable for a time, at least from the EU.
Crowdstrike caused a Microsoft outage. Most people don't differentiate.
At the same time there was a Microsoft Azure outage, but it was minor compared to Croudstrike
Crowdstrike caused a Crowdstrike outage for systems running Crowdstrike. The vast majority of Microsoft products and services were not affected.
No they haven't. It's Crowdstrike's bug but it's Microsoft's problem that they accepted a change in their kernel without testing.
There was an outage just before crowdstrike, google MO821132
Ouch , ok was not aware of this one. Thanks
Did the title change? Because it doesn't say "another outage" it says "new outage"
Is that a meaningful difference?
yes, do you think it's not?
In common usage, "new outage" assumes generally assumes, well, new-as-compared-to-something-else. So yes, while the literal meanings are different, I'd interpret them as synonyms in this context.
I've always wondered how much of Azure is built on Windows Server (and .NET) vs Linux plus open source languages.
From 2019:
> It's not just Microsoft's Azure customers who are turning to Linux. Guthrie explained, "Native Azure services are often running on Linux. Microsoft is building more of these services. For example, Azure's Software Defined Network (SDN) is based on Linux."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-li...
> It's not just Microsoft's Azure customers who are turning to Linux. Guthrie explained, "Native Azure services are often running on Linux. Microsoft is building more of these services. For example, Azure's Software Defined Network (SDN) is based on Linux."
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-developer-reveals-li...
Large chunks of it are still running on .NET, but nowadays, that's an open source cross-platform framework, so they're running it on Linux, mostly within containers.
Do you know their reasoning for doing it on Linux? Bigger ecosystem? Performance? I can't imagine licensing fees being an issue.
The choice of Linux was controversial when Azure was built. It caused a huge issue with the Windows Server team. But it's what customers wanted, and Azure was built very pragmatically.
Hotmail ran on Unix for years after Microsoft acquired it. It took quite some time for them to migrate it to Windows server.
Yeah they ran on FreeBSD, but despite multiple attempts IIRC they didn't fully pull off the migration until Windows 2000. There was a relatively honest paper they wrote about the transition:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021021164226/http://www.securi...
Why would customers be concerned about what OS the service runs on? They want to be able to run Linux VMs but they don’t care what’s under the hood.
I would feel uncomfortable if my vm host ran Windows.
I wonder (more like, assume) that Microsoft has an own-rolled Linux distro. Surely they're not just RedHatting it in prod. Right?
Problem with the Azure network infrastructure
https://azure.status.microsoft/
https://azure.status.microsoft/
Too many people must've turned on their Windows 11 computers at once.
[deleted]
Am I suffering from confirmation bias from HN bubble, or is Microsoft really going downhill?
When was the last time Microsoft was significantly better than the competition (on the tech side) ?
To my knowledge, they always were between average and terrible, compared to their competitors
To my knowledge, they always were between average and terrible, compared to their competitors
This is mostly immeasurable and unanswerable. They've had lots of good/better tech that's succeeded in the marketplace (Active Directory, DirectX) and hasn't (windows phone 8) for a whole variety of reasons.
They have tech that's solid, but more niche, like .NET/C# which is applied more in the enterprise than internet oriented software. The windows NT kernel is a solid piece of engineering compared to other OSes (it was originally designed/developed by Dave Cutler who came from DEC and did VMS and applied/improved a lot of the concepts there), but has often been hindered by shit thrown on top of it.
Microsoft has done a lot, both good and bad. But a lot of the reasons they're as successful as they are is for the "bad" stuff, like extreme support for backwards compatibility, getting "good enough" to market while other companies languished in perfectionism or distraction (cough cough apple before 2000).
They have tech that's solid, but more niche, like .NET/C# which is applied more in the enterprise than internet oriented software. The windows NT kernel is a solid piece of engineering compared to other OSes (it was originally designed/developed by Dave Cutler who came from DEC and did VMS and applied/improved a lot of the concepts there), but has often been hindered by shit thrown on top of it.
Microsoft has done a lot, both good and bad. But a lot of the reasons they're as successful as they are is for the "bad" stuff, like extreme support for backwards compatibility, getting "good enough" to market while other companies languished in perfectionism or distraction (cough cough apple before 2000).
It seems like they were just more average back then.
May we all aspire to be average and terrible and also the most valuable company in the world.
Robber barons are your ideal? Hopefully not everybodys...
This "whatever makes most money is the right thing to do" thinking is bad. We need to do better.
This "whatever makes most money is the right thing to do" thinking is bad. We need to do better.
This notion of value is interesting.
It will kill the world while looking very good on the quarterly report.
It will kill the world while looking very good on the quarterly report.
You’re either suffering from confirmation bias or were mistaken about how well they were doing.
Microsoft has been middling for as long as I can remember. They’re not awful, but they’re also not exceptionally good.
They get by on being good enough that it’s easier to use another of their products than to buy in to a better solution.
The outages are somewhat new, but I think in large part because they didn’t host a whole lot a decade ago. They mostly sold software that buyers had to manage.
Microsoft has been middling for as long as I can remember. They’re not awful, but they’re also not exceptionally good.
They get by on being good enough that it’s easier to use another of their products than to buy in to a better solution.
The outages are somewhat new, but I think in large part because they didn’t host a whole lot a decade ago. They mostly sold software that buyers had to manage.
I guess that depends on your definition of downhill.
There's not a single mention of Windows in the article. It rather sounds like a service issue?
Meant to say Microsoft, going to change it thanks
[deleted]
It was Azure Front Door: their reverse-proxy/CDN service. I doubt it's running on Windows.
My bad, I meant to say Microsoft as a company not windows as a product
> The culprit appears to be network infrastructure
Not a lot of the network infrastructure runs on Windows. From previous public statements and information out there, most of Azure's network stack is Linux-based.
> Am I suffering from confirmation bias from HN bubble
Yes.
Not a lot of the network infrastructure runs on Windows. From previous public statements and information out there, most of Azure's network stack is Linux-based.
> Am I suffering from confirmation bias from HN bubble
Yes.
Meant to say Microsoft.
> Yes.
Good to know
> Yes.
Good to know
Why care if you got monopoly-alike power?
Because people can easily move off Azure...It is a highly competitive market
If you're in a large corporation, it might not be that easy. I've been at multiple companies that have left AWS due to the fact that Amazon has in other lines of business been a competitor. So we're locked in for reasons that are completely unrelated to technology. It would be so much better if AWS spun off into it's own company.
define easily! if people go all in on Azure they become very deeply entrenched. Granted it is usually something that could be migrated from, but not without a significant cost if you already have a lot of infrastructure on it.
Sorry, what do you mean?
I'll be getting downvoted for it but imho Ms never really cared about creating good software products and has been shoveling (at best) mediocrity through their wildly successful sales channels and through developing a stranglehold on public institutions (vendor lock-in). Azure is just another angle.
Oh now I get what you meant.
Businessmen as well as politicians are not interested in quality, it's just sales numbers and reelection.
Businessmen as well as politicians are not interested in quality, it's just sales numbers and reelection.
They cared when they had real competition. That was a long time ago.
I know, but C# is quickly turning into my favorite socially acceptable back end language; and Visual Code is a decent editor, with awesome integrations, another winner.
Fucks sake.
At least Windows is quickly turning into exactly the kind of dumpster fire I would expect.
Fucks sake.
At least Windows is quickly turning into exactly the kind of dumpster fire I would expect.
BigCo criticism removed from upper front page in 3, 2...
Time to introduce our friends and relatives to Linux
The platform affected was likely running Linux.
Ya the company I work for has a bunch of .net containers, and it all runs in linux. A lot of people don't realize Microsoft embraced linux.
Let's just hope they don't get to the extinguish stage