Microsoft services experienced a widespread outage impacting users in North America, with reports on platforms like Down Detector spiking around 11:40 a.m. Pacific time. Services primarily affected included Outlook, Microsoft 365, Teams, and Microsoft Store, alongside intermittent impacts on Azure and Defender XDR.
Microsoft identified the cause as a portion of its North American service infrastructure not processing traffic as expected, leading to issues with load balancing and service availability. The company initiated efforts to restore the infrastructure, including redirecting traffic to alternate infrastructure and implementing further load balancing.
Throughout the incident, Microsoft's official service health status page was intermittently inaccessible to users, frequently displaying a "429 Too Many Requests" error due to high traffic, which hindered direct access to updates.
By later in the day, Microsoft stated that its consumer-focused products were operational. However, issues persisted for Microsoft 365, and Outlook users reported continued problems with sending and receiving emails, sometimes receiving a "451 4.3.2 temporary server issue" message. Outage reports on Down Detector began to decline but remained significant for services like Outlook and Microsoft 365, indicating an ongoing recovery process rather than full resolution.