Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Exchange Online as Servers Fail Health Checks

Microsoft is dealing with a major outage that may affect several Microsoft 365 services worldwide, notably access to Exchange Online, according to iTnews. Microsoft says servers are failing automated health checks and dropping offline, which is straining the infrastructure that remains.

The company first acknowledged the problem at 4.54am AEDT, and Australian business users were among those likely to wake to email that would not load.

What users are seeing

Affected Australian users have reported an error message saying “something went wrong,” along with a recommended action to refresh. Microsoft’s status page, which is slow to load, indicates that Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR may also be affected. Microsoft itself describes the impact on these services as potential.

What Microsoft says is wrong

Microsoft first traced the trouble to a portion of its infrastructure under elevated load across several regions, which it said was likely contributing to the connectivity errors. It later said a number of servers were unexpectedly unavailable, straining what remained.

The company has since pointed to a specific component on the servers that handles health checks. Microsoft is trying to get around that component with a configuration change. It said it was testing the change to address a problem that makes servers fail automated health checks and become unavailable.

What Microsoft is doing about it

• Testing a configuration change to stop servers failing health checks.
• Restarting all affected servers and watching their health as they come back.
• Moving traffic off impacted servers and redistributing it to healthy infrastructure, as noted on the Microsoft 365 status page.
• Pausing all deployments internally.

Microsoft said on X that it is “aggressively pursuing all pathways to reduce impact.” It has not said which cloud region holds the affected servers.

What it means for users

Organizations that rely on Exchange Online for email may see delays or failed connections until the servers return to service. iTnews describes the situation as a developing story and says it will add details as they come in. No restoration time has been given in the available information.

Why Exchange Online is the focus

iTnews singles out Exchange Online access as the most visible problem. For users in Australia, where the working day was starting, the first sign was email that would not load. Microsoft has not listed every service it considers affected, and its own wording about impact stays cautious.

Reports on the full scope may change as the status page updates, and iTnews says its coverage will be extended as more information becomes available.

Source: iTnews