Discussion
Mass outages reported for Teams, 365, Outlook. https://mashable.com/tech/microsoft-outage-affecting-365-teams-outlook-copilot-nov-12-2026
Not just 'the Americas' either. People I know here in the public sector of Aotearoa NZ, twiddling their thumbs at work.
(edited with link and specifics, TY @MaddieM4)
@JulianOliver BUT for this one hour: Do you have an SLA that you could try invoke and actually won't?
We all know that 1h of outage on self-hosted infrastructure will get blamed on the infrastructure. Days of outage on MS stuff will be blamed on "eh, nobody can fix this, let's play cards"
@JulianOliver I'm not affected by the outages, but I would be interested to know what you use to provide the functionality of Teams.
I desperately want to give some friends alternatives.
@ColinTheMathmo Heya. Matternost for team chat, calls on BigBlueButton, Nextcloud for calendar and general office things. I use these every work day, self-hosted, with people all over the world, from uni students, to clients in a consult. Rough around the edges here and there a few years ago, not so now. Fast and smooth, the lot.
@JulianOliver Super ... thank you ... copied and bookmarked for future reference.
Much obliged.
@JulianOliver @nuintari Also modern hardware has gotten *really* reliable and is very rarely a source of outages any more
Don Christie, CEO of locally owned and surprisingly ethical data center Catalyst, has some good things to say in here, about Aotearoa NZ's self-harming dependence on a handful of big tech vendors across all sectors, arguing we need a shift to open source:
"[...] if the government were to be more strategic about how it adopts digital technologies, we would find a much richer base of our digital platforms, which potentially make us less prone to problems in the future."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/2569444/outlook-still-down-microsoft-outage-hits-users-of-365-service-teams-globally
"Downdetector logged more than 7.4 million reports worldwide, peaking at nearly 20,000 a minute, more than 1500 times normal levels.
"It shows how much of the working day now runs through one provider's email and collaboration tools," said Luke Kehoe, lead industry analyst at Ookla.
Microsoft shares were slightly higher in afternoon trading."
That last line tells it like it is. Big tech providers are dealing drugs.
@JulianOliver it's ridiculous, we are a stupid species on a fast-track to extinction
@JulianOliver There is a lot to be said for having one basket, and watching it very carefully.
You have weird bosses. Most would never trust their employees over M$.
@JulianOliver Remember, folks: when the cloud fails, it isn't your FAULT but it is still your PROBLEM.
@JulianOliver that's... like how big is the scope of the outage? Microsoft does a lot of things.
@MaddieM4 Looks like 365, Outlook, teams etc.
@JulianOliver (checks frantically) oh god, at least we can still Bing things!
@MaddieM4 @JulianOliver heh. Suspect your joy will be shared by at least a handful of people, globally.
Infrastructure is so often a story of eggs and baskets, whereby some have far too many.
It's hard to avoid mentioning that the self-hosted equivs to Teams/365/Outlook I look after are down for no more than an hour a year. This is not unique. It's the same for many others I know, from fellow sysadmins to my own students. It's a fairytale that self-hosted infrastructure is unreliable. Simply not the case when built up with best practices, maintained with sufficient knowledge & care.