Microsoft Azure suffered a partial outage yesterday, one a number of sources have suggested has yet to be fully resolved. The problems forced Microsoft's MSN website offline and were described on the Microsoft Azure status page as "a connectivity issue".
Azure last suffered an outage in August 2014 and some time prior to that, an expired security certificate forced Azure out of service. These additional technical issues might thwart Microsoft's attempts to secure Azure as a viable alternative to cloud offerings such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The outage impacted a number of regions (excluding its Australian operations) and covered storage, websites and Visual Studio Online. Alongside MSN, the outage impacted Windows Store, Xbox Live and the Microsoft press center. The corporation's Azure status page suggested, "Extended recovery is underway for this incident. Starting at 19 Nov 2014 01:00 UTC customers using Application Insights in Multi-Region may see higher than normal data latency." Prior to that the page suggested, "A limited subset of customers using Storage in North Europe may be continuing to experience intermittent issues or latency when accessing services as a backlog of requests is processed."
There has been some speculation that Microsoft's issues may have been caused by Xbox Live. There have been a substantial number of highly anticipated games released of late (Far Cry, Halo, etc.), as well as the release of new consoles. This alongside a range of updates that will have spurred substantial downloading by gamers could - potentially at least - have soaked up Azure's available capacity, causing the issues it has experienced.
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