Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is gradually recovering after a widespread outage disrupted major services including Microsoft 365, Xbox, and Minecraft. Reports of outages began appearing on DownDetector around 12 PM ET, while Microsoft confirmed on its Azure status page that it detected the technical issue at the same time.
By 3:57 PM ET, Microsoft announced that it had deployed its “last known good configuration” to restore functionality and had started rerouting traffic through healthy network nodes. The company expects Azure to be fully operational again by 6:20 PM ET (23:20 UTC).
During the outage, many users on Reddit reported being unable to access Xbox Game Pass, while others noted interruptions across enterprise tools, Microsoft’s support pages, and even some airline websites.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Mortgio:
“We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services. Customers should continue to monitor their Service Health Alerts and the latest update on the Azure status page.”
This latest disruption follows a major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that occurred on October 20, which brought down multiple high-traffic apps and websites for several hours.
While the Azure incident appears less severe, it highlights the growing dependency on major cloud infrastructure providers and how simultaneous issues across AWS and Microsoft Azure can ripple across the global internet.