back to article Microsoft's Online Exchange fixed after going titsup for NINE HOURS

Microsoft has fixed a nine-hour outage in its online Exchange service that crippled North American customers’ Office 365 and hosted Outlook accounts. The outage struck companies in US, Canada and Mexico, leaving entire organisations unable to read, write or retrieve emails or seeing their email slow down to a snail's pace. …

COMMENTS

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Meh

    Microsoft 101

    1) Add complexity to pretend they are unequalled Masters of IT with the Best Idea in Usability Ever

    2) A problem occurs

    3) Won't fix, Can't fix, Incapable to fix

    4) Eventually the situation unfucks itself

    5) Maybe adding some more complexity will be help for next time.

    6) Goto 1)

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft 101

      2.5 Remember to have no way of knowing if the service is down, other than the volume of posts on Reddit. Have no official site or dashboard to check status.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Microsoft 101

        Like http://status.office365.com/ you mean?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft 101

      This was a network issue - I blame sabotage by Cisco!

      1. hplasm
        Devil

        Re: Microsoft 101

        Network Problem? Microsoft Networking (sic)? NetBIOS or NetBEUI?

  2. msknight

    2 hours - wimps!

    I remember one time, a contractor that needed to call microsoft. He was on hold or so long that he fell asleep.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 2 hours - wimps!

      A contractor, you say... What was his hourly rate? "on hold"... yeah right, he was raking it in! :)

    2. Guus Leeuw
      Joke

      Re: 2 hours - wimps!

      That took all of 10 minutes, then, being a contractor and easily bored...

      Yes yes yes me contractor

    3. Annihilator
      Alert

      Re: 2 hours - wimps!

      "He was on hold or so long that he fell asleep"

      Cue many responses starting "that's nothing!..." culminating in "I started a call on my first day, and trained an apprentice up to take over the hold queue when I retired".

      Do you realise what you've done?? :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 2 hours - wimps!

        My place in the queue was handed down to me by my father, and it was handed to him by my grandfather...

  3. RyokuMas
    Facepalm

    Ok, things can - and do - go wrong.

    But two hours on hold with no update about what's going on? Only thing I can ever recall being that bad was when I used to play World of Warcrack, and the servers were down...

  4. Peter2 Silver badge

    9 hours downtime on exchange?

    Hmm. I think I might (maybe) have had that in total over the last 5 years if you include downtime for maintenance outside of working hours on our exchange box.

    Remind me, why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?

    1. Steven Raith

      Because it's in the cloud. If you don't think outside of your paradigms you'll never outflow your revenue stream into the blue sky!

      Get with the program, dude. Peace out.

      Steven "I made myself feel bad" R.

      1. BongoJoe

        You missed out the vital word 'solution'.

        1. Steven Raith

          *shakes fist at BongoJoe*

          Also, do I have a serial downvote stalker? Awesome! I've always wanted a stalker....

          Steven "getting all the wrong kind of attention, and not in a sexy way" R

    2. Annihilator
      Coat

      "Remind me, why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?"

      Because, you know, the cloud. And synergies. And the cloud. Scaling. The cloud.

      <mumbles away into the corner talking about synergies...>

      1. Steven Raith

        Damn, I forgot about synergies!

        I'll get you next time, you damned kids.

        *shakes fist at Annihilator*

    3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      re: why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?

      You think you can manage a Microsoft server better than the people who created it ?

      - at least that was their pitch to us .

      1. channel extended
        Joke

        Re: re: why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?

        Yeah I can.

        Never turn it on!

    4. Captain DaFt

      "Remind me, why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?"

      Because you may be making a profit, which any lackey in a boardroom will testify in front of Government belongs to their corporation!

      Why do you insist on stealing from the Big Corporations?

    5. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Remind me, why should I move from an on premesis solution to a more expensive cloud offering?

      So that when the service fails, you can take comfort in knowing that it isn't just you who is unable to do anything and your best bet is to head off to the nearest bar or golf course and join them...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think Microsoft's problem is that they've made the infrastructure depend on their own software. That's clearly a bad decision when it comes to reliability.

    I think Microsoft's customers problem is that they should have known better.

  6. Jamie Jones Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Cue inevitable commentard response:

    I know this is going to be a typical response here, but I have to say it anyway...

    " During the day, Jim1001 wrote on the Office 365 community page:

    “Our entire corporation cannot send or receive emails from Outlook (Office 365 Exchange) or even the OWA web browser as of 8AM MST time this morning June 24, 2014! I have never seen a world-wide email go down like this."

    Well Jim, you should sack the idiot who made this 'all eggs in one basket' decision to go to 'the cloud' (ugh) in the first place

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Every cloud has a silver lining

    Just saying

    1. cyrus

      Re: Every cloud has a silver lining

      Inside every silver lining, there's a dark cloud.

      - George Carlin

  8. Peter Simpson 1
    Facepalm

    "a portion of the networking infrastructure entered into a degraded state"

    Isn't that why we have redundant infrastructure and switchover?

    // must have been a VERY LARGE portion of their network infrastructure...

  9. NC_TAXPAYER_13

    Outlook (That I never used for my own reasons) was a 'free program' that was bundled to Microsoft Operating System (OS) for years, now it a paid for program that is part of their 360 Office program that you pay for annually not like to old Office suits that you purchased once and used several years. You can buy it separately for around $100 a year per machine (PC).

    In my opinion it was a sort of bait and switch. Offer the program free as part of the OS and once you have 90% of the people depending on it take it out of OS and put it in office FOR THE PROFITS.

    I don't want any part of CLOUD computing. I trust private multinational conglomerates (or other business) about as much as I do my elected officials and that's not much. Place all my personal information on their cloud 'voluntarily' and trust them to not be snooping threw my files.

    The internet USED to be a fun thing that I used primarily for education and some socializing. Over time it seems to have grown into some sort of monster that has it nose in everything everywhere. To make this post I had to share info with a business that swears they don't share the information. I know that IS a lie but what is the reasonable alternative. ALL their AFFILIATES (particularly sales and marketing information miners) I am sure get it which to some extent I understand.

    I doubt anyone ever gets a clear answer from Microsoft as to just what DID happen. It may have had something to do with our so called 'homeland security' as it seems to be isolated to the US (they gathered all the info from the could that Microsoft maintains? (maybe)). Its hard telling for sure.

    1. DaLo

      Don't think it was ever free. Outlook express was free, but that was not the same thing at all.

      Outlook was, however, included with the Exchange serve licence, as long as you had the relevant Exchange server Cals you could also use Outlook. This is no longer the case and you need to buy Outlook separately (or as part of Office of course).

      However, there is not much point in using exchange without outlook and vice versa so not so much of a bait and switch. The main point is that it limits people using Open office for Word, Excel replacements while having Outlook for Email (as there really isn't much from the Open Source community that can match it) as the price difference isn't that big after you negotiate a nice discount.

      1. admiraljkb

        Actually, Outlook97 (or was it 98...) WAS free back when it had little market share compared to ccMail and Notes... It was also a very long time ago, in what feels a galaxy far far away....

    2. rizb

      Outlook was never free.

      Outlook Express was free, as was the previous Microsoft Internet Mail&News which was basically a beta of OE with a longer name.

      OE eventually became Windows Live Mail and stayed free.

      Outlook has always been depressingly expensive.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More MS CloudFog... Sorry I just can't resist...

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ..............

    <This is a massive FU to all the sleazy salesmen peddling the cloud>

    <Yeah I know the numbers look good Mr Salesman but your service sucks>

  11. W. Anderson

    Continuation of poor reliability

    What is so poignant about this story report is that just recently, a Microsoft Partner was attempting to pursuade a large European company office in USA to swich to Office 365 from the solid performance and reliable Zimbra Groupware SaaS service enjoyed satisfactorily for many years.

    In past two years Microsoft's Cloud Services and software have proven substantially more fragile and insecure than competitor products and services, and demonstates the overall sub-standard quality of Microsoft offerings. US entities that continue to naively subscribe to Microsoft fare because it is an admired American icon will be severely burdened with second class technology for many years to come.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Continuation of poor reliability

      "have proven substantially more fragile and insecure than competitor products and services,"

      Can't say I have heard of a single security issue with Microsoft's cloud in that time. Whilst many of Microsoft competitors have been scrambling to fix open source related SSL holes....

      "will be severely burdened with second class technology for many years to come."

      What is this miracle service that's technically better? Office 365 is miles ahead of Google Apps, Zimbra, etc. etc.

      1. Steven Raith

        Re: Continuation of poor reliability

        So you wouldn't say failing to renew their SecureSocketLayer certificate wasn't a security issue?

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/02/23/ridiculous-microsofts-azure-fails-over-unrenewed-security-certificate/

        Might want to do your research, MS PR troll.

      2. Roo
        Gimp

        Re: Continuation of poor reliability

        "Can't say I have heard of a single security issue with Microsoft's cloud in that time. "

        That may be because your sight and hearing is impaired due to your head being firmly wedged between your buttocks. I believe that the gimp mask belongs to you.

  12. Leeroy

    Thank you

    Can't wait to show this to the boss tomorrow morning :)

  13. Dan Paul

    What is a Cloud but...

    Vapor that disappears when it gets hot?

    Online only systems and SaaS are nothing but an attack vector and smoke and mirrors. To sell something that can have NO VALUE when it doesn't exist is criminal.

    It's one thing if you have such a system for your own internal use and a wholey different thing to try to sell it to others.

  14. Kurt 5

    IMAP nightmare

    Don't try to be an IMAP user on Office365. They have a special home brewed version that doesn't work very well. When Office365 starts throttling your connection (Yes! Frequently!) or just falls down the support folks are clueless.

    It should be pointed out that Thunderbird's IMAP implementation for error handling/recovery is pretty abysmal. I started cleaning up the code but don't have enough time to do it justice.

  15. SVV

    Nine hours? Seriously, what is their failover tech?

    Just asking, as I've worked on super duper mission critical stuff in banks, amongst other things. There you have mirrored servers for every mission critical system and a whole mirror Data Centre several miles away on standby to take over at a moment's notice as a bare minimum requirement to meet banking regulations.

    Surely they weren't so stupid and cheapskate to put all their cloud in one basket?

    (Sorry for the horrendous mixed metaphor)

    Or is this a learn as you go along exercise, forgetting hat "moving to the cloud" is a risk too far if that's true?

  16. Jay 2
    Facepalm

    WooHoo go cloud!

    “Office365 is beginning to look like a very poor choice for mission critical services.”

    Strange that! Surely there must be at least one person in such an organisation that points out the obvious (to most of us) eggs-in-in-one-basket situation? I guess they're not shouting loud enough or have nice enough PowerPoint (ahem) presentations to spell it out.

  17. PeterM42
    Facepalm

    That is the trouble with CLOUDS...

    ...they can blow away at a moment's notice.

    I have said it before and will say it again - outsource your computing, insource the resulting problems.

    47 years in computing teaches you a few basics.

  18. DonkeyTDong

    Turns out the IRS was trying to delete the rest of its email.

  19. Gis Bun

    Surprising....

    .... No one commented that Gmail is always up and running. They have the same problems there.

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