Microsoft Azure Power Incident in West US Disrupts Windows Update and Store Services
February 9, 2026
A significant power disruption at a Microsoft Azure datacenter in the West US region over the weekend led to a widespread service outage, uniquely impacting core Windows ecosystem services including Windows Update and the Microsoft Store. The incident highlights the critical, yet sometimes fragile, interdependencies within modern cloud infrastructure, where a failure in one component can cascade to affect millions of end-users and IT administrators globally. According to Microsoft, the event began at 0800 UTC on February 7 and was not fully mitigated until 0423 UTC on February 8. The company attributed the problem to "an unexpected interruption to utility power" at the facility, which caused a partial loss of power. Although backup systems engaged, the event resulted in intermittent unavailability, timeouts, and increased latency for multiple Azure services in the region. Affected services included Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Confidential Compute, and, notably, Azure Site Recovery—a service designed for business continuity. The outage's most direct impact on users emerged when Microsoft confirmed at 1634 UTC on February 7 that the datacenter issues were impairing "customers' ability to complete operations in the Microsoft Store and Windows Update." This meant users experienced failures or timeouts when attempting to install apps or download system patches. For many IT administrators, this translated into an unexpected, nearly three-hour reprieve from the constant flow of updates. Microsoft confirmed core restoration of these services by 1930 UTC that same day, though it noted some residual latency affecting Windows Server update operations continued to be addressed separately. The extended duration of the disruption, lasting over 20 hours before being declared mitigated, is likely to raise questions about power resilience design and incident response procedures in hyperscale data centers, which typically employ robust Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and generator systems. This incident occurs amid a period of heightened scrutiny on cloud service reliability and follows Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's recent call for a renewed focus on engineering quality within the company. While the outage caused inconvenience, it served as a rare pause in the often relentless update cycle for Windows systems, underscoring the pervasive reach of cloud dependencies in everyday computing.
Source: theregister
