back to article Microsoft SkyDrive, Outlook stricken by cloud outage

Microsoft's Outlook, SkyDrive, and People technologies are experiencing problems, making it difficult for some people to access the cloud services. The issues began on Wednesday morning and affected Microsoft's hosted storage, email and contact services. Its Azure cloud coincidentally reported problems for SQL databases in the …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This isn't truly an issue because cloud storage is infallible.

    Right??

    1. Bob Vistakin
      Facepalm

      It could be because Microsoft still haven't figured out how a calendar works.

  2. hplasm
    Windows

    Down, down

    Deeper and down.

    Do do do...

    The theme tune for the SkyDrive adverts?

    (Except in UK, where it's BSBDrive)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Serves them right

    They will insist on using windows server

  4. Nate Amsden

    nothing to see here

    they are just having some issues renaming skydrive to something that doesn't cause them legal issues.

    I bet it's just a typo in the registry that propagated!

    1. hplasm
      Coat

      Re: nothing to see here

      Renaming... SkyDrive Clown Services.

  5. Mephistro
    Happy

    Quick! Look for cover!

    There is an avalanche of 'told you so's coming this way!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Quick! Look for cover!

      Told you so!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    timeout for additional functionality

    NSA taps are being added

    back online soon

  7. Wallyb132
    FAIL

    Status Page Link

    Why does the "status page" link go to another el reg story instead of... umm... well... the microsoft umm "status page"?

  8. tin 2

    Cloud means someone much bigger than I or my employer could ever hope to be has lots and lots of servers in geographically dispersed locations, with fault tolerant services running on them, meaning that even if there is a fault somewhere within the infrastructure, everything works still, the fault being invisible to the user.

    After all that's the only reason one would consider moving their stuff to the cloud right?

    Right?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry, not just "geographically dispersed locations", you and your employer are the beneficiaries of a brave new concept in redundant backup: Multiple redundant agencies. The US's CIA, NSA, Dept. of Commerce, etc by now have all your data safely backed-up in a multitude of distributed hollowed out mountains.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A small number?

    How many is 'a small numer'?

    Say, 1%, or .01%.

    With an (estimated) 500 million users that's 5 million or 500,000 potential problems getting on the phone to MS helpdesks.

    Good luck.

  10. Hugh McIntyre

    NY Times also struggling this morning

    The NY Times was also down for a while this morning and struggling afterwards. Apparently some suspicion of a DNS screw-up from some external commenters. Perhaps related, or the NY Times is depending on Microsoft hosting?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Isn't this the same company that was touting its Office 365 uptime the other day?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Coat

      Office 362 uptime I believe.

  12. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    My level of surprise asymptotes to zero {Ooo I lurve that word}

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Quelle surprise

    Just found the workaround for the MS outlook android app not sync'ing over 3G. (Delete operator proxy.) What kind of fuckwit company can take months to fail to fix such a well defined defect??

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What kind of fuckwit company can take months to fail to fix such a well defined defect??

      That'd be the kind of fuckwit money grubbing tech corporation that makes it's abortion of a web browser the shell of its flagship product, having configured it to allocate twenty times more cache than it can manage. Thus, over a few years of normal web browsing the great unwashed masses' computers might mysteriously grind into uselessness. Of course, despite being aware of the "defect", said money grubbing tech corporation would never able to innovate a solution. No little "service patch" script to clear the cache and set it to 30MB.

      Almost makes me wonder if such a corporation could intentionally build timebombs into its products! Perhaps with a view to encouraging its victims suckers customers to "upgrade" on a profitable regular basis.

      God only knows how many poor souls might be tricked by such a scam into discarding perfectly good hardware for a new machine pre-infected with the next, even greater iteration of said flagship product - the joy that was known as ME.

      Perhaps it's supposed to be time for you to "upgrade™" from your "incompatible™" Android to a Microsoft™ Corp. Inc. SurfaceRT®™ running Microsoft™ Windows®RT™?

      ------------

      The words Microsoft, Windows, Surface, RT, SurfaceRT, WindowsRT, upgrade, incompatible and leverage are the property of Microsoft™ Corp. Inc., Redmond.

  14. larry dickman

    childish

    I think the writer of this matter is quite obnoxious.

    "In typical Redmond fashion....." ?

    Well what did you want them to do? Send a private jet for you to come for a look see at what happened?

    S--T happens - to better and worse companies than Microsoft.

    An airline is only good when they take off and land on time-- if everything else is wonderful, smooth flight, decent food- movies was great- stews were hot- but the plane gets stuck waiting for a gate or other unavoidable issues, then they immediately become a terrible airline- right?

    Why don't you stop the pointless drama and just report the news.

    LD

    1. Mad Mike

      Re: childish

      The issue here is Microsofts attitude to their users.

      Several major applications are down and they post a simple 'we're fixing it message'. No real idea on when it will be available, what the cause is etc.etc. In other words, they're treating people as mushrooms. They're letting people know how important they are as customers. I'm still trying (as of 21:00 UK time) to log into Hotmail and it still isn't working!!

      Also, Microsoft are claiming all sorts of things for their geographically dispersed services with lots of redundancy etc.etc., which this problem shows are just rubbish. Their services have no better uptime than hosting it yourself and you have little control over your service or data, customer service is bad and they keep you in the dark.

    2. Vic

      Re: childish

      > Why don't you stop the pointless drama and just report the news.

      A first post... putting the world to rights...

      Astroturf has such a *unique* smell, does it not?

      Vic.

  15. batfastad

    Ask for a refund!

    Oh.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    I don't mind when the cloud is down, makes it a nice sunny day

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Headmaster

      If the cloud is down it's a foggy day.

  17. tiredofbeingmonitoredbygovernments

    Its a B%*tch

    I wish I could tell my stakeholders...yes we have an outage...please be patient while we work to resolve. And then the MS Page says expect an update at 2pm...its now 4pm....sheesh....mail down for awhile MS.

  18. btrower

    I am so surprised not

    Single point of failure. What are the odds?

  19. Ammaross Danan
    Coat

    Rebranding

    I'm I the only one who noticed that Microsoft's canned statement said "Hotmail" instead of "Outlook"?

    Yep, thought so...

  20. Herby
    Joke

    Microsoft Failure

    What is the opposite of an oxymoron, a redundancy?

    Yeah, that's the ticket.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft Failure

      Or an oxydeprivedmoron?

  21. Sebastian A
    Facepalm

    I'm sorry

    I don't have anyone available to pay your bill at the moment...

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As Outlook as down, the MSN homepage had an add about Scroogle Google. Het Microsoft, if you are going to run an advert to tout your offering over your competitor, you better make sure you service is functioning first.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The turning-attachments-into-a-link rather than attaching was a stupid idea anyway.

    It's just so much more faff...

  24. 404

    Windows Update

    Now wouldn't that be funny? Remember the NT4 Service pack 3a? Betcha nobody that currently works for Microsoft remembers. Bummer

    ;)

    1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: Windows Update

      Shurely you meant SP6a? When SP6 blocked higher-numbered TCP/IP ports for non-administrator accounts?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seems to be working fine now - it was down for a few hours for me. Only the second time in over 15 years I've had problems with Hotmail/Outlook.

  26. davidp231
    Trollface

    Oxymoron...

    Microsoft Works.

    1. Vic

      Re: Oxymoron...

      > Microsoft Works.

      Yes. The "?" character wasn't legal in DOS filenames, y'see...

      Vic.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "We've pinged Microsoft for more information on the problems and will update this story as and when the company gets back to us."

    I hope it's not to: theregister@hotmail.com

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Wait...

      PING microsoft.com (65.55.58.201) 56(84) bytes of data.

      --- microsoft.com ping statistics ---

      16 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ping / security

        Many public-facing servers are deliberately configured not to respond to ping.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If my servers were down or intermittent for this kind of time I would have potentially lost the company tens of thousands of £ in missed trades. So why are these cloud companies actually trusted with such important work? Fortunately my Boss was convinced out of it despite the sales bluff.

  29. Ian Moyse

    MS is not infallible

    Many choose Microsoft cloud services because of the name and believing bigger to be better, but this proves again that MS is not the be all and end all. After a number of Azure, Dynamics, 365 and other outages in the past 24 months,

    Typically the smaller more focused cloud vendors are delivering a more reliable service than Msoft and at least with such vendors if something does go wrong you can speak to someone.

    Ian Moyse

    Workbooks

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