Microsoft Azure outage – Asda, Xbox and Minecraft all affected

A significant global outage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform is causing widespread online disruption, affecting services from major banks and retailers to popular gaming platforms.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, thousands of users have reported issues with a number of services, including the banking giant NatWest, the supermarket Asda, and Microsoft-owned game Minecraft, as well as the company’s Xbox services.

The problems began around 16:00 GMT when Microsoft reported a “degradation of some services” due to “DNS issues.” The Domain Name System (DNS) is the internet’s phonebook, translating website addresses into machine-readable IP addresses. Errors in this system can disrupt connections across the internet.

This was the main factor that also led to the huge Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage last week.

The disruption extended to core Microsoft products, with some users of Microsoft 365, including Outlook and Teams, experiencing delays and connection issues.

Microsoft quickly identified a likely cause, stating it suspected an “inadvertent configuration change” related to its Azure Front Door (AFD) service as the trigger.

The company is currently working on two concurrent actions: blocking all changes to AFD services and rolling back to a last known good state to fully restore service.

The incident underscores the vast reliance of the modern internet on a handful of major cloud providers, making their operational stability critical for global commerce and consumer services.