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back to article Microsoft Azure capacity woes hit UK customers. Yes, you read that right

Microsoft's public cloud business is experiencing growing pains – fresh deployments are being held up by insufficient rack space in the UK data centres that host Azure. According to company insiders, Microsoft rents data centre space in London and Cardiff from third-party providers, and owns a facility in Durham, but these …

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  1. hplasm
    Facepalm

    UK and no Cloud?

    Only MS could achieve this.

    21 1 Reply
    1. Ragarath
      Reply Icon

      Re: UK and no Cloud?

      When it rains it pours.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Rich 11
        Reply Icon

        Re: UK and no Cloud?

        That's not rain you can feel trickling down the back of your neck.

        6 0 Reply
    2. Vince
      Reply Icon

      Re: UK and no Cloud?

      Yeah ONLY Microsoft.

      If you ignore the recent issues Amazon Web Services had with its capacity and pretend it hasn't happened to them.

      8 4 Reply
      1. Adam 52 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: UK and no Cloud?

        "If you ignore the recent issues Amazon Web Services had with its capacity and pretend it hasn't happened to them."

        You mean a shortage of the t2 time-shared instance type in one AZ for a few hours? Not really the same as a long-term inability to provide an instance family anywhere on an entire continent.

        That's if El Reg's reporting can be trusted, which I'm not sure it can as it neglects to mention that the G-series isn't available in the UK - so can't have run out - and if they mean other instance types then there's no mention of the Ireland, Frankfurt, Cardiff or Magdeburg options.

        1 1 Reply
    3. breakfast Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: UK and no Cloud?

      Azure is the colour of a totally cloudless sky, so I guess the name should have been a giveaway from the start.

      Nice to have an Azure story that isn't just another Blue Sky Of Death though.

      7 0 Reply
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: UK and no Cloud?

      I'm sure Google could spare them lots of unused capacity...

      2 0 Reply
    5. MyffyW Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: UK and no Cloud?

      This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

      - Nye Bevan

      7 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    data sovereignty is a PR issue?

    So GDPR, data privacy, location of data etc is a PR issue? Wow.. UKCloud just played their cards on the matter rather boldly

    4 1 Reply
    1. Frank Bitterlich
      Reply Icon

      Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

      Wel, that's not completely wrong - as long as the FBI can demand (and was confirmed in this by a US judge) the data regardless of where it is, as long as it is accessible from the US (i.e. any data), European data protection laws are just a PR issue and/or the cause of an extra paragraph of text in a National Security Letter.

      7 2 Reply
      1. Aladdin Sane
        Reply Icon

        Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

        IIRC, that was a specific case with a US account holder whose data was stored overseas for network efficiency reasons.

        Link

        2 0 Reply
      2. scowaller
        Reply Icon

        Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

        Data sovereignty in the UK has NOTHING to do with the FBI unless you're a US company.. and has everything to do with UK and EU data and where the data is stored

        1 0 Reply
        1. HWwiz
          Reply Icon

          Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

          Actually if you are a UK PLC, current data retention laws state that your data and in particular Financial data must reside in the UK.

          So UK PLC's cannot use the MS Cloud in the US or Canada.

          I recently helped clear out the BoA DC in Canada Sq London. There was talk that MS were going to take that one over.

          0 0 Reply
    2. Paul Kunert
      Reply Icon

      Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

      UKCloud is not suggesting these things are mere PR issues, more that US firms inc Microsoft and AWS aren't actually building new DCs here, they are renting space from local providers, not being transparent about it, and then suggesting they have invested in the UK and so customers should not be concerned about data location. Paul @ The Reg

      8 0 Reply
      1. Steve_Jobs1974
        Reply Icon

        Re: data sovereignty is a PR issue?

        If you want good insight how AWS operates, take a look at this.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyOAjFNPAbA

        This provides a good view of what AWS is doing and how its blowing away other cloud providers.

        0 0 Reply
  3. nematoad
    Windows

    Manners.

    "This could be a classic case of the Microsoft ivory tower," the source suggested.

    How very polite. I bet that's not what the punters are saying.

    3 0 Reply
    1. Kevin Johnston
      Reply Icon

      Re: Manners.

      Does that tower come with or without lube?

      4 0 Reply
  4. Joe 35
    WTF?

    Developing with real data?

    From the anonymous source

    "Microsoft wanted us to go for a Canadian data centre, which we can't as the data has to stay in Europe."

    WTF are they doing developing with real customer data?

    1 7 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Developing with real data?

      Who told you it was real data? It could simply be a legal requirement...

      0 0 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    According to the average punter "only Microsoft Customers are affected".

    You might want to keep your data under an old mattress - it works for me!

    2 0 Reply
  6. Wiltshire

    Meanwhile (it's alleged that) some senior Microsoft Cloud UK people have had enough and are leaving.

    2 1 Reply
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If people stored more zeros and less ones...

    ...then there would be more space. Simple.

    4 0 Reply
    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: If people stored more zeros and less ones...

      No no no, other way around.

      1s are much narrower than 0s. Zeros are fat bastards.

      8 0 Reply
      1. Kiwi
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Re: If people stored more zeros and less ones...

        Re: If people stored more zeros and less ones...

        No no no, other way around.

        Well that could explain a lot of things. I'm sure there's a lot of Zero's at MS HQ...

        #wishIwashere2daysago

        0 0 Reply
  8. Tezfair
    Stop

    "up to 75 per cent off list price"

    In other words, cheap now, but budget for a list price once we have your data and you have ditched all your on prem kit.

    8 0 Reply
    1. elip
      Reply Icon

      Re: "up to 75 per cent off list price"

      That is 100% accurate. We have a deal for 60% off for the first year. After that - list price. I can't believe how insanely huge our footprint is already during our initial pilot stage.

      0 0 Reply
  9. Tim Brown 1
    Pint

    Definition of Cloud Computing customers

    We're too stingy to pay for our own systems experts we prefer to just shout at people when things go wrong,

    8 1 Reply
  10. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Trollface

    London,Cardiff

    ... There is more to the UK than its capital cities.

    In other parts, there's much spare brownfield land that could be turned into datacentre. But the local hotels aren't as nice....

    0 0 Reply
  11. int19

    Can Microsoft simply get more computing power from the cloud? I hear it's this revolutionary new thing where no one needs to think about how much infrastructure they need anymore.

    1 0 Reply
  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can Microsoft simply get more computing power from the cloud? I hear it's this revolutionary new thing where no one needs to think about how much infrastructure they need anymore.

    1 0 Reply
  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder if they have thought of spinning up a virtual Azure data center in AWS?

    0 0 Reply

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