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Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 Global Outage Due to DNS Issues

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Updated March 21, 2026 at 03:34 PM9 sources
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Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 Global Outage Due to DNS Issues

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Microsoft experienced a widespread outage impacting Azure, Microsoft 365, and related services, affecting customers and organizations worldwide. The disruption began around 16:00 UTC and was attributed to DNS issues, resulting in degraded availability for services such as Azure Front Door, the Azure Portal, Intune, Exchange admin center, and authentication services. Major companies and sectors, including payroll providers, healthcare organizations, and the Dutch railway system, reported significant operational impacts, with users unable to log in or access critical business platforms. Microsoft acknowledged the outage, provided mitigation advice such as using programmatic access methods and failover strategies, but did not immediately offer an estimated time for resolution.

The outage's effects were felt across a broad spectrum of industries, with reports of internal workflow disruptions and delays in essential services like payroll processing. Microsoft advised customers to consider implementing failover strategies using Azure Traffic Manager and to monitor the Azure status page for updates. The incident highlighted the critical dependency of global businesses on Microsoft's cloud infrastructure and the cascading impact of DNS-related failures on authentication and service availability.

Timeline

  1. Oct 30, 2025

    Lingering intermittent issues continue into October 30

    After the main outage was declared over, some users and services continued to experience residual or intermittent problems into 2025-10-30. Follow-up reporting noted that while the major disruption had ended, not all effects had fully cleared immediately.

  2. Oct 29, 2025

    Most Microsoft services gradually recover, with full recovery expected later that evening

    Late on 2025-10-29, Microsoft said service health was improving and estimated recovery by 23:20 UTC. Most affected Azure and Microsoft 365 services were gradually restored by the end of the day, though some instability remained.

  3. Oct 29, 2025

    Microsoft says rollback completed and recovery is underway

    By about 5:30 p.m. ET on 2025-10-29, Microsoft reported that rollback deployment had completed. The company said it was recovering nodes and rerouting traffic, while warning users to expect intermittent failures during restoration.

  4. Oct 29, 2025

    Outage causes downstream disruptions for third parties and customer websites

    As the incident unfolded on 2025-10-29, organizations and services dependent on Microsoft infrastructure reported knock-on effects, including issues affecting Alaska Airlines, Vodafone UK, Heathrow Airport, and Azure-hosted customer websites. Reports also described broader internet-facing disruption involving services such as Zoom, Starbucks, and Capital One.

  5. Oct 29, 2025

    Microsoft identifies suspected configuration change and starts rollback

    During the outage on 2025-10-29, Microsoft said it suspected an inadvertent configuration change had triggered the incident. The company blocked further customer configuration changes and began rolling back to a last known good configuration while rerouting traffic and recovering nodes.

  6. Oct 29, 2025

    Microsoft outage begins, disrupting Azure Front Door and DNS-dependent services

    On 2025-10-29, a global Microsoft outage began around 11:40 a.m. to noon ET, affecting Azure Front Door availability and causing DNS-related failures. The disruption impacted Azure-hosted applications and major Microsoft services including Microsoft 365, Teams, Entra, Xbox Live, Minecraft, Outlook, and LinkedIn.

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Sources

October 29, 2025 at 05:39 PM
October 29, 2025 at 04:20 PM

4 more from sources like zdnet zero day, hackread and bleeping computer

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Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 Global Outage Due to DNS Issues | Mallory