Seeing users having issues with the "Modern Outlook", specifically empty accounts. Switching back to the "Legacy Outlook" which functions largely without the help of the cloud fixes the issue. How ironic.
Tell HN: Azure outage
421–430 of 841 posts
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#422For some reason an Azure outage does not faze me in the same way that an AWS outage does. I have never had much confidence in Azure as a cloud provider. The vertical integration of all the things for a Microsoft shop was initially very compelling. I was ready to fight that battle. But, this fantasy was quickly ruined by poor execution on Microsoft's part. They were able to convince me to move back to AWS by simply ma…
The problem is that in some industries, Microsoft is the only option. Many of these regulated industries are just now transitioning from the data center to the cloud, and they've barely managed to get approval for that with all of the Microsoft history in their organization. AWS or GCloud are complete non-starters.
I moved a 100% MS shop to AWS circa 2015. We ran our DCs on EC2 instances just as if they were on prem. At some point we installed the AAD connector and bridged some stuff to Azure for office/mail/etc., but it was all effectively in AWS. We were selling software to banks so we had a lot of due diligence to suffer. AWS Artifact did much of the heavy lifting for us. We started with Amazon's compliance documentation and provided our own feedback on top where needed.
I feel like compliance is the entire point of using these cloud providers. You get a huge head start. Maintaining something like PCI-DSS when you own the real estate is a much bigger headache than if it's hosted in a provider who is already compliant up through the physical/hardware/networking layers. Getting application-layer checkboxes ticked off is trivial compared to "oops we forgot to hire an armed security team". I just took a look and there are currently 316 certifications and attestations listed under my account.
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#423The paradox of cloud provider crashes is that if the provider goes down and takes the whole world with it, it's actually good advertisement. Because, that means so many things rely on it, it's critically important, and has so many big customers. That might be why Amazon stock went up after AWS crash. If Azure goes down and nobody feels it, does Azure really matter?
People feel it, but usually not general consumers like they do when AWS goes down.
If Azure goes down, it's mostly affecting internal stuff at big old enterprises. Jane in accounting might notice, but the customers don't. Contrast with AWS which runs most of the world's SaaS products.
People not being able to do their jobs internally for a day tends not to make headlines like "100 popular internet services down for everyone" does.
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFD is down quite often regionally in Europe for our services. In 50%+ the cases they just don‘t report it anywhere, even if its for 2h+.
This is the single most frustrating thing about these incidents. As you're harmstrung on what you can do or how you can react until Microsoft officially acknowledges a problem. Took nearly 90mins both today and when it happened on 9th October.
so true. instead of getting a fast feedback we are wasting time searching for our own issues first.
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#425Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that in some industries, Microsoft is the only option. Many of these regulated industries are just now transitioning from the data center to the cloud, and they've barely managed to get approval for that with all of the Microsoft history in their organization. AWS or GCloud are complete non-starters.
I moved a 100% MS shop to AWS circa 2015. We ran our DCs on EC2 instances just as if they were on prem. At some point we installed the AAD connector and bridged some stuff to Azure for office/mail/etc., but it was all effectively in AWS. We were selling software to banks so we had a lot of due diligence to suffer. AWS Artifact did much of the heavy lifting for us. We started with Amazon's compliance documentation and…
I've found that lift and shifting to EC2 is also generally cheaper than the equivalent VMs on Azure.
Microsoft really wants you to use their PaaS offerings, and so things on Azure are priced accordingly. A Microsoft shop just wanting to lift-and-shift, Azure isn't the best choice unless the org has that "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" attitude.
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#427Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#428High availability is touted as a reason for their high prices, but I swear I read about major cloud outages far more than I experience any outages at Hetzner.
Same with DigitalOcean. I run one box and it hasnt gone down for like 2 years
To be fair, in the AWS/Azure outages, I don't think any individual (already created) boxes went down, either. In AWS' case you couldn't start up new EC2 instances, and presumably same for Azure (unless you bypass the management portal, I guess). And obviously services like DynamoDB and Front Door, respectively, went down. Hetzner/DO don't offer those, right? Or at least they're not very popular.
Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#429Re: Tell HN: Azure outage
#430The sad thing is - $MSFT isn't even down by 1%. And IIRC, $AMZN actually went up during their previous outage. So if we look at these companies' bottom lines, all those big wigs are actually doing something right. Sales and lobbying capacity is way more effective than reliability or good engineering (at least in the short term).
Look how important we are, is what these failures show
What do you mean? That IT isn't important for Microsoft and Amazon?
That's certainly not the right conclusion.