Microsoft outage explained: Tech expert tells why you lost access to your email and Teams

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A health check gone wrong that led to Microsoft servers going down like dominoes and then a laborious process to bring services back online – that’s an expert’s explanation for…

A health check gone wrong that led to Microsoft servers going down like dominoes and then a laborious process to bring services back online – that’s an expert’s explanation for the global tech outage that crippled Kiwi businesses and government agencies.

The outage reportedly hit Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories yesterday, according to tracker Downdetector.

New Zealand’s visa processing was affected, settlements of house sales stalled, court appearances were thrown out of whack and local offices were left without email and access to Teams.

Microsoft was able to resume most services in New Zealand by this morning, with tech expert Paul Stenhouse telling Newstalk ZB the company had ruled out malicious action or a cyber attack.

Instead, the “latest thinking” based on what information has been released publicly suggested a routine health check on a Microsoft server triggered the incident, Stenhouse said.

The cloud is “really just ... someone else’s computer, someone else’s server”, Stenhouse said.

Microsoft runs “hundreds of thousands if not millions” of them around the world, he estimated, and each one runs regular checks on itself.

The latest thinking was that a health check was tripped and servers reported themselves as being unwell.

“I’m not feeling too good. I’m gonna shut down, go and send your traffic to someone else.”

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