Microsoft Azure Experiences Major Outage Impacting Services Worldwide

Washington, D.C. — Microsoft Azure faced significant outages on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, disrupting access to numerous key services including Microsoft 365, Xbox Live, and even major retail websites like Starbucks and Costco. The issues began around 11:40 a.m. ET, with user reports of service failures flooding social media.

A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged the problems, stating, “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services.” The company encouraged customers to check service health alerts for updates.

By 7:30 p.m. ET, Microsoft confirmed that recovery was underway, with full restoration expected by 7:40 p.m. The company indicated that the outage was caused by an “inadvertent configuration change” which triggered failures in Azure Front Door, the company’s global traffic routing service.

The outage notably affected a wide range of sectors, showing how reliant modern businesses are on cloud platforms. Many users experienced issues accessing productivity tools, gaming services, and shopping sites, highlighting the extent of Azure’s infrastructure.

Catchpoint CEO Mehdi Daoudi warned that the incident exemplifies vulnerabilities within internet infrastructure. He stated, “Resilience gaps are still widespread, and outages like this can cost millions in lost revenue.” Daoudi emphasized the importance of strong infrastructure resilience, calling it a “boardroom conversation.”

Microsoft’s recovery efforts included restoring traffic to healthy nodes and rolling back to a previous stable configuration. By the afternoon, reports on DownDetector showed a sharp decline in outage reports across Azure, though gaming services still faced lingering issues.

Other organizations, including Alaska Airlines, also reported disruptions due to the Azure outage, illustrating the widespread impact on industries dependent on Microsoft’s cloud services. While recovery steps appeared effective, the incident served as a reminder of the fragility of large-scale cloud services.