[German]Over the last few hours, half the world's IT has probably been disrupted (at least it feels that way). It seems to me that there were two isolated incidents. Firstly, a faulty CrowdStrike update has forced Windows systems around the world into BlueScreens. Airports, rail traffic etc. are down because of this outage. At the same time, the (Microsoft) IT infrastructure was once again in disarray. A configuration change at Azure has brought Microsoft 365 and the relevant services to their knees. I'll now pull out the part that concerns Microsoft separately.
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In my German blog post Ausfall von Microsoft 365 und weltweite Störungen – wegen CrowdStrike-Update, was zum BSOD führt? I picked up on tips from readers who reported serious IT problems worldwide. Blog reader Michael commented "Something is going on in the world… BER airport and Palma are probably completely down". There is probably a problem with a faulty update for CrowdStrike software on Windows systems leading to a blue screen. But at the same time there was a fault with Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 outage
Initial reports from blog readers indicated that there was a malfunction at Microsoft. Someone made the following post on Facebook and asked me if I knew anything about it.
I then looked on allestoerungen.de (the German pendant to downdetecor.com) and there was a report of a major disruption that was noticed and reported in Germany at around 6:00 am.
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What Microsoft says
I then checked what I usually do in such cases to see what the Microsoft team on X had to say about the status. The problem with Microsoft 365 has been apparent for about 8-9 hours worldwide. Microsoft wrote the following on X on July 19, 2024 and 1:41 a.m:
We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. More info posted in the admin center under MO821132 and on *ttps://msft.it/6019lRURc
I removed the link to the *ttps://status.cloud.microsoft/ page because at the time the first version of the blog post was written, I couldn't access the status page because the page in the cloud was also "standing". There was then another succession of tweets (see screenshot below) that believe improvements have been made.
In the meantime, it is clear that the above Microsoft 365 outage (apps and services) had nothing to do with the aforementioned CrowdStrike incident. It was merely duality of events. Unfortunately, I cannot access the Admin Center, but the above outage was probably caused by a configuration change in the Azure cloud.
The information can be found in this article by the colleagues at Bleeping Computer, among others. It states that the list of services affected by the outage includes Microsoft Defender, Intune, Teams, PowerBI, Fabric, OneNote, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Windows 365, Viva Engage, Microsoft Purview and the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. So the cloud was a direct hit. Further information on the topic can be found in the following blog posts.
Similar articles:
Worldwide outage of Microsoft 365 (July 19, 2024)
Windows systems throw BSOD due to faulty CrowdStrike update
Why numerous IT systems around the world failed due to two errors on July 19, 2024
CrowdStrike analysis: Why an empty file led to BlueSceen
Review of the CrowdStrike incident, the biggest computer glitch of all time
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