Well, here we go again. For the second time in November, the internet has been given a proper shake by a major cloud outage. This time, it was Microsoft’s turn, as a widespread issue with its Azure cloud platform sent ripples across the globe.
The disruption hit Microsoft’s own suite of productivity software, causing headaches for anyone trying to get work done. But the impact stretched far beyond Office, affecting a whole host of industries that rely on Azure’s infrastructure to keep their services running smoothly.
It’s a case of serious déjà vu. This latest incident comes hot on the heels of a similar disruption over at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which left thousands of sites and some rather popular apps in a state of global turmoil.
As the second largest player in the cloud market, Azure holds a significant 20% share worldwide, trailing only behind AWS. So when it sneezes, a large portion of the digital world really does catch a cold.
In a familiar turn of events, the root cause was traced back to the Domain Name System (DNS). Microsoft confirmed that a DNS issue within its Azure Front Door content delivery network was the culprit. It’s a sobering reminder of how these core internet protocols remain critical – and apparently, a common point of failure, given that AWS blamed its own recent woes on the very same type of problem.