Major Microsoft outage causing internet outages around the world.
Multiple websites are down or not working properly this morning, including for Air New Zealand, police and Customs, and some ANZ customers say the bank’s app is again not working after thousands were affected by an outage yesterday.
The disruption comes as international media report global outages related to aMicrosoft bug sparked by what the company called an “inadvertent configuration change” that affected its widely used Azure service.
Air NZ said it could cause delays at check-in and boarding today, while police said some of their websites weren’t working and people should call 111 in an emergency and 105 for non-emergencies.
The RealMe service - used to log on to multiple Government websites including IRD, Immigration and the Companies Office, has also been taken offline in the outage.
“It was working about 1am and now its off again grrr”, one woman wrote on an Auckland community Facebook page this morning.
We’re investigating an issue impacting Azure Front Door services. Customers may experience intermittent request failures or latency. Updates will be provided shortly.
It was not immediately clear if online banking was affected.
ANZ said this morning that service had been restored last night, but “we are aware a large number of people are logging into goMoney this morning and due to this some may experience a delay accessing the app”.
“We apologise to our customers for the disruption and the inconvenience [yesterday’s issue] caused.”
Meanwhile, Air New Zealand said the “global Microsoft outage is affecting some Air New Zealand systems and app functionality”.
“During this time, you may not be able to access our online services as usual.
“Our flights, both international and domestic, continue to operate, however, the outage is affecting some airport systems, which may cause delays at check-in and boarding.”
“If you’re travelling today, please allow extra time at the airport and keep a close eye on your flight information through the Air NZ website, or airport departure boards.”
Its contact centre was “receiving a high volume of calls” and it urged people to only call if travelling in the next 24 hours.
Air travel may be affected by today's global Microsoft outage, with Air New Zealand among companies affected. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Police said their main website, newcops, and Firearms Safety Authority public-facing websites were affected.
“The outage is online only – users are still able to call 105 to make a non-emergency report, and please call 111 in an emergency.”
Agence France-Presse reported Microsoft cloud customers were experiencing widespread service disruptions after the company said an “inadvertent configuration change” affected its widely used Azure service.
The bug, which began at 4pm GMT (5am NZT), affected Azure Front Door, the company’s content delivery network service used by enterprise customers to “optimise application performance”.
The crowdsourced error reporting site Downdetector showed problems across a wide range of customer-facing websites, including Xbox, Alaska Airlines and retailer Costco, Agence France-Presse reported.
Configuration changes are routine in technology operations – companies make them constantly to improve services, add features, or fix problems.
However, even a small error in configuration can cascade through highly interconnected systems and spread almost instantly to cloud customers worldwide, Agence France-Presse reported.
“We’re investigating an issue impacting Azure Front Door services. Customers may experience intermittent request failures or latency. Updates will be provided shortly,” Microsoft said on its Azure support account on X.
A spokesman for Microsoft Australia-New Zealand said, “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services. Customers should continue to check their Service Health Alerts and the latest update on this issue can be found on the Azure status page.”
He also referred the Herald to the firm’s Azure account on X and its Azure status page.
Last week, a different outage in Amazon’s crucial cloud network, AWS, saw popular internet services ranging from streaming platforms to messaging services to banking taken offline for hours.
AWS leads the cloud computing market, followed closely by Microsoft’s Azure, with Google Cloud in third place, Agence France-Presse reported.
Businesses, governments and consumers worldwide rely on their infrastructure for online activities.