Microsoft down? Services recover after major outage hits Azure, 365 and more - and even Minecraft and Xbox were affected

Welcome to our coverage of this outage - not long ago, we saw huge spikes in reports on outage tracker DownDetector, with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 all affected.

The official Azure status page is now saying that there is an issue, and it is being investigated.

"We are investigating an issue with the Azure Portal where customers may be experiencing issues accessing the portal," the site says, noting more information will be provided shortly.

DownDetector is showing major spikes across Microsoft services as this outage catches hold...

In case you needed reminding, Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, so forms the backbone of not only the company's own services, but many customers as well.

Microsoft 365 is your one-stop office software shop, including popular tools such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Teams and much more.

Basically, if either of these have an issue, it's bad news all round...

Worryingly, it looks like some major Microsoft customers might also be affected, as DownDetector is showing outage spikes at Starbucks, Kroger, Costco.

It's not just apps and services that are affected either - it looks like even the Microsoft Store is down too.

Or is Microsoft just doing an Apple, and is about to surprise launch a whole load of new phones?

Reports continue to flood in from Microsoft 365 users, with DownDetector's spike growing ever larger.

This is the start of the working day for many in the central and Western United States, so having all these users log on at once probably isn't helping the issue at all...

Microsoft has also posted an update on the official Azure status page, and it could be good news.

"Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing DNS issues resulting in availability degradation of some services. Customers may experience issues accessing the Azure Portal. We have taken action that is expected to address the portal access issues here shortly. We are actively investigating the underlying issue and additional mitigation actions. More information will be provided within 60 minutes or sooner."

Reports do seem to be tailing off concerning issues at Azure, with DownDetector showing a dropoff - could the outage be over already?

Given the chaos caused by the recent AWS outage, that could be a major relief for everyone...

Fortunately, it seems numbers are dropping across the board - there are still reports of issues at Microsoft 365, and customers including Starbucks, but they're nowhere near as high as a few minutes ago, so we're hopeful the worst may be over.

We're still waiting for another update from Microsoft though...

Microsoft has issued another update, and it's working hard on a solution, it seems.

"Starting at approximately 16:00 UTC, we began experiencing Azure Front Door issues resulting in a loss of availability of some services. In addition. customers may experience issues accessing the Azure Portal. Customers can attempt to use programmatic methods (PowerShell, CLI, etc.) to access/utilize resources if they are unable to access the portal directly. We have failed the portal away from Azure Front Door (AFD) to attempt to mitigate the portal access issues and are continuing to assess the situation."

"We are actively assessing failover options of internal services from our AFD infrastructure. Our investigation into the contributing factors and additional recovery workstreams continues. More information will be provided within 60 minutes or sooner.

Reports are definitely tailing off now - so hopefully this means Microsoft's work is paying off, and things will be back up and running soon.

Another update from Microsoft - and it thinks it has found the problem.

"We suspect that an inadvertent configuration change as the trigger event for this issue. We are taking two concurrent actions where we are blocking all changes to the AFD services and disabling a problematic route that we found to be related to this, and at the same time rolling back to our last known good state."

"We have failed the portal away from Azure Front Door (AFD) to mitigate the portal access issues. Customers should be able to access the Azure management portal directly."

"We do not have an ETA for when the rollback will be completed, but we will update this communication within 30 minutes or when we have an update."

They've found the culprit - Microsoft says, "We suspect that an inadvertent configuration change as the trigger event for this issue."

Chalk that one up to experience, I guess!

As promised, Microsoft now says things are starting to recover...

"Customers should be able to access the Azure management portal directly, while all portal extensions are working correctly there may be a small number of endpoints that might have a problem loading (i.e. Marketplace)," the latest update says.

Still need a hand? Microsoft has you covered...

"While we dont have an ETA yet. customers can consider implementing failover strategies with Azure Traffic Manager, to fail over from Azure Front Door to your origins: https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/architecture/guide/networking/global-web-applications/overview "

Just a few minutes ago at 2:11 PM ET, the Azure status page received this update:

"We have initiated the deployment of our 'last known good' configuration. This is expected to be fully deployed in about 30 minutes, after which customers will start to see initial signs of recovery. Once this is completed, the next stage is to start to recover nodes while we route traffic through these healthy nodes."

And that's a start on good news, as Azure is deploying its 'last known good configuration' which should hit customs in about 30 minutes, and recovery might start then. We're keeping an eye on further updates to the status.

While it's not an update that recovery is beginning – though Azure is in the midst of deploying its 'last known good configuration' – the Current Impact section of the official status page now lists only the Azure Front Door as the issue.

Azure's working on a fix, but it's taking longer than expected

Azure has posted another formal update to its status page as of 2:53 PM ET:

"We have initiated the deployment of our last known good configuration. This deployment was initially expected to complete within 45 minutes; however, due to protective blocks we have put in place to safeguard the AFD service, we are encountering some delays. While progress is ongoing, these safeguards are extending the overall deployment time. Once the rollout is complete, we will begin recovering nodes and re-routing traffic through healthy nodes to accelerate recovery."

The jump to 45 minutes is longer than expected recovery time; the previous promise was about 30 minutes, but Azure encountered 'protective blocks' in place to protect the 'AFD service.' It acknowledges the delays and says the process is ongoing.

With that said, no exact time frame has been given, but we're keeping an eye on this for further updates.

Azure's remedy has been pushed and customers might start seeing initial recovery

This is a fast follow-up – at 3:01 PM ET, Azure updated its status page to now reflect that its 'last known good configuration' has been pushed and that the customer might be starting to see recovery.

"We have pushed our ‘last known good’ configuration, and customers may begin to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement.

Customer configuration changes will remain temporarily blocked while we continue mitigation efforts. We will notify customers once this block has been lifted."

That's good news that the push has gone through, but it's a bit of a wait-and-see effort now. Azure also notes, "We are continuing to monitor progress closely and will provide an ETA for full mitigation within the next 20 minutes as we assess recovery across the AFD service."

This is going to take a while

In another update posted at 3:18 PM ET, Azure states that its deployment is now completed, successfully, and that "full mitigation" should arrive "within the next four hours as we continue to recover nodes."

Simply put, that means this will take a while, and we can expect another update from Azure within 2 hours or sooner if necessary.

Further with the deployment successful, some folks might be seeing initial recovery, but Azure is still recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy ones.

Here's the full statement:

We initiated the deployment of our ‘last known good’ configuration, which has now successfully been completed. Customers may have begun to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement.

Customer configuration changes will remain temporarily blocked while we continue mitigation efforts. We will notify customers once this block has been lifted.

Some customers may also have experienced issues accessing the Azure management portal. We have failed the portal away from AFD to mitigate these access issues. Customers should now be able to access the Azure portal directly, and while most portal extensions are functioning as expected, a small number of endpoints (e.g., Marketplace) may still experience intermittent loading problems.

At this stage, we anticipate full mitigation within the next four hours as we continue to recover nodes. We will provide another update on our progress within two hours, or sooner if warranted.

Although we are seeing signs of recovery and have an estimated timeline, customers may also consider implementing failover strategies using Azure Traffic Manager to redirect traffic from Azure Front Door to their origin servers as an interim measure.

Learn more about Azure Front Door failover strategies for AFD: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/networking/global-web-applications/overview

This message was last updated at 19:19 UTC on 29 October 2025

Azure is being a bit more specific and has updated the previous status message to note that it expects 'recovery to happen by 23:20 UTC on 29 October 2025.' That comes out to 7:20 PM ET in New York City or 11:20 PM in the UK.

Still, we can expect further updates from Azure within two hours.

Azure says it's operating at over 98% availability

We're checking in shortly after Azure's promised, estimated recovery time of 7:20 PM ET, and there is a new status update. Along with the fact that recovery is progressing steadily, Azure shared:

"The AFD service is now operating above 98% availability. While the majority of customers and services are mitigated or seeing strong improvement across affected regions, we are continuing to work on tail-end recovery for remaining impacted customers and services. We have revised our mitigation time and are currently tracking toward full mitigation by 00:40 UTC on 30 October 2025, though we will communicate if mitigation is achieved sooner."

That's pretty close to 100%, but Azure estimates it'll take until the early hours of tomorrow morning to fully mitigate the issue. Reports on Down Detector for the impacted platforms – including Azure and Office 365 – are both back in the reports we see daily, a bit over 100.