Microsoft MSFT.O has warned its Azure users of potential service slowdowns due to several undersea fibre cuts in the Red Sea. The firm pointed out that these interruptions would specifically impact traffic transiting through the Middle East and connecting the Asia and Europe regions.
In a service update on Saturday, Microsoft wrote that repairing undersea fibre is usually a slow process. “Undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair; as such, we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime. We’ll continue to provide daily updates, or sooner if conditions change,” Microsoft said.
The Red Sea outages have compelled Microsoft to redirect Azure traffic over other routes.
As reported by Reuters, Azure is the second-largest cloud provider in the world behind Amazon Web Services (AWS) and hosts millions of users globally. The service is used for various purposes, including enterprise solutions, hosting web applications, and software development, making continuous connectivity essential for most organisations.
Microsoft has emphasised that it is actively managing network traffic to minimise the impact on users. The company is leveraging alternative routes and optimising traffic flows to maintain as much stability as possible while repair work on the undersea cables continues.
According to industry insiders, disruptions to undersea cables are not rare and may cause cloud and internet services to be impacted for weeks as a result of the complexities of repair work. Azure customers who are dependent on cross-region connectivity, especially between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, are most likely to be impacted.
Microsoft has prompted its customers to keep up to date using service health notifications and to expect periodic delays until regular network operations are restored.
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With inputs from Reuters
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