14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft initially confirmed that Windows Live users were experiencing difficulty while accessing their accounts, on February 16th. The company subsequently acknowledged that an outage was affecting all online properties reunited under the Windows Live brand umbrella. Essentially, customers could no longer sign in into Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger using Windows Live IDs. Microsoft worked fast to resolve the blackout, and managed to deal with the problem extremely fast. Arthur De Haan, from the Windows Live team, said that the outage only lasted approximately an hour.
“As some of you may have noticed (we heard from you on Twitter!) we had an issue with the Windows Live ID service between 9 and 10AM PST this morning. Due to the failure of one server, Windows Live ID logins were failing for some customers, and this increased the load on our remaining servers. We took the problematic server offline and brought a new server into rotation. We identified the root cause and fixed it in less than an hour, but it took a while to resolve the logjam that had built up in the meantime, and to redistribute the load to normal levels,” Haan stated.
At the time of this article, Windows Live ID was functioning under normal parameters. Microsoft has obviously moved fast to resolve the issue, however, the company has yet to make public the exact cause of the blackout. Windows Live users should no longer experience any issues when it comes down to signing into their accounts. Haan also notes that precautions are being taken so that similar problems will be avoided in the future.
“As with all incidents like this, we will fully investigate the cause and will take steps to prevent this from happening again. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused to you, our customers and partners,” Haan added.