The outage on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform that caused the UK government’s G-Cloud service to go offline was the result of a calculation error caused by the extra day in February due to the leap year.
Writing on the Azure blog the firm’s corporate vice president for service and cloud, Bill Laing, said while the firm had still to fully determine the cause of the issue, the extra date in the month appeared the most likely cause…
“While final root cause analysis is in progress, this issue appears to be due to a time calculation that was incorrect for the leap year…”
“Some sub-regions and customers are still experiencing issues and as a result of these issues they may be experiencing a loss of application functionality. We are actively working to address these remaining issues,” he added.
The outage affected customers across the globe, with the G-Cloud service from the government one of the most high-profile accounts to be affected, as it was only launched last week as part of Whitehall’s attempt to improve the use of IT services in the public sector.
There still isn’t a patch for stupid.
CLOUD: Complete Loss Of User Data
Now that is a classic!
I had an earlier shot at an anagram…
Centralised Lock On User’s Data
But I Like yours too !
I love it, “there isn’t a patch for stupid.”
Impromtu government holiday.
Friggin’ really Microsoft?
When all your zunes when tits-up 4 years ago, you didn’t learn anything, did you?
MS, I believe this problem was solved even before Y2k.
Its called a calendar.
Leap year happen cyclicly, every four years, like clockwork.
I guess if you’re Microsoft you don’t focus on anything longer term than the next quarter. Besides you might be fired by then anyway…
Still, I’d bet there some major ass covering going on in Redmond right now.
It’s a bit more complex than that but near enough.
Give them a chance, they’ve only had since 1752 – look how long it’s taken for them to get used to metric
I guess it’s still Office 365… Even in a leap year!
It should be 365.2524 days/year with some seconds in added there occasionally to adjust for the slowing of earths rotation and for natural disasters (like the 9.0 Japan earthquake which took a second off the earth’s rotation.)
bpod: get a sense of humor.
RR: very good!
I can’t figure the people who talk smack about anybody who doesn’t like Windows and instead likes Unix (Mac OS X and iOS and Linux are all based on Unix.)
Microsoft’s been an embarrassment to itself since Gates was screaming at his Windows 1.0 developers to “Make it more like the Mac!”
Unfortunately, one of the things Microsoft has never learned, and has demonstrated on numerous occasions, is that they don’t understand the function of quality control.
This is funny. I was doing financial programming in the 90s (on OS/2) and it was important to know what day of the year it was, so I had to code for leap years. Nobody told me to do this, and yes I even tested my code for Y2K issues.
Speaking of time bugs in software. Has there been a credible solution for the Unix Y2K38 bug?
Yes, by switching to 64 bit integers to count the number of seconds since day 0, which was thursday, January 1st 1970.
I’m on the floor LOL with that one. No wonder Windows 8 is so lame.
Wonder if M$ Programmers can walk and chew gum at the same time ???
Maybe there are no leap years and therefore no extra days in the Chinese calendar? The coders for MS who live and work there probably never even thought of it.
Don’t even ask me what I think of Win7 (who’s the idiot who decided that ‘your’ files had to be buried down in the bowels of some hidden folder?).
Bullet proof date handling routines have been around for almost 50 years and are repeatedly published in books and magazines as they are one of the first things a would be programmer must master. Not surprising to me that nobody remembers how to do it or cares enough to be sure the basics are being well handled.
Good programmers seem to be incredibly scarce at Microsoft and have been for a long time. The same problem persistently heckles Autocad users who used to deal with bugs that had been documented for decades, but not fixed.
Date handling is one of those QA’s remember to do. Developers and ops generally forget. This is a team smell.
Microsoft is being shaken up on the inside. Whether you like Windows 8 or not at least they’ve stopped sitting still waiting for the world to come to them. As for this Azure problem? It looks the Sinofskyization of Microsoft hasn’t reached the Azure group yet.
I see a mac cult forming on DU. All hail the “I”.
Why?
After Y2K, you’d have thought M$ had this all squared away.
WTF, did these guys go to school with the metric measurment experts at NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter program?
I sure hope there aren’t any mission-critical systems running on Microsoft software…
jpfitz said: I am starting to see the benefits of the “cloud”…
The mentality towards managing your data anywhere is the same regardless of using the cloud (what a stupid term) or not. A good metric is “if my house burned down along with my laptop, then how long before I would be back in business?”.
Remember that includes apps and data. Also you have to factor in how much your data is worth to you. It doesn’t cost much to have data security but you can spread the risk around. Have local and offsite redundancy. Use vendors that are SAS70 compliant if you’re running a business. Pick vendors that support Windows, Mac and Linux.
I don’t like the Box model as much as Dropbox or Sugarsync because it’s more difficult to provide redundancy. Don’t rely on any of them to provide industrial strength backup and recovery, but they are extremely convenient and worth using.
I can start with a clean Linux or Mac and be completely ready to go in about an hour. If I’m at home then I can shave 20 minutes or so off that because I can rebuild from a local backup. The only exception is my video. Windows takes 2-3 longer because the app installs are long and Windows updates take forever. I have triple redundancy on all my data and quadruple on my active projects. The extra stuff for active projects is for fine grained version control.
The setup takes a less than an hour. Local backup should be automatic when you’re on your home network and costs <$100 to get going. An industrial strength offsite storage mechanism will run you about $100 per year per provider. Review all their privacy and security policies (e.g. 448-bit encryption, external audit, SAS70 or HIPPA style compliance, etc). Finally run a disk check on your local backup media regularly.
Last question for you: if your laptop or phone was stolen could you wipe it remotely?
Dr said,
“Don’t rely on any of them to provide industrial strength backup and recovery”
Agree completely with you. I only use the BOX and Dropbox for photos and the like which I have backed-up on a spare external HD stored in a water and fire proof safe.
“if your laptop or phone was stolen could you wipe it remotely?”
To answer you query I am old school and don’t have a smart phone. Eighty dollars a year for a throwaway Kyocera phone has been my portable electronic. I did just purchase a Samsung Galaxy 5 for kicks and have local cable service with wi-fi hot spots plentiful. I can make calls and text for free with google. I don’t see a need today for a laptop with these new smaller devices, at least I have no need. Yes, backing up and restoring with MS is a pain in the ass, I tried Linux but again the software needed only runs on MS. Why install a Virtual machine when I have a real machine, albeit a MS Gates pain in the butt to back-up and restore. Why fight the beast. Your turn-around time for what you need sounds very good and I salute you Spearmint. I’m being honest not sarcastic. I’d love to have a Mac to play with, I just can’t afford a new computer or get my better half to understand why I would need one. She is tech challenged and worried about how to use the equipment in our house if I were to die as it is now. She can’t even grasp the concept of and fears my Harmony One remote control. The only electronics my better half uses is the cable DVR, and when a problem arises I’m the genius. Har.
I’ve got to admit I’m a nutter about this but my entire work life is in my data and I pooched 3 disks in 5 years. If you ever want off site I’d recommend CrashPlan. Great deals for US vets as well.
Sounds like Microsoft is still relying on newbie programmers, still wet behind the ears from college, who probably didn’t learn about leap year during their time in classes, learning how to make video games, to create most of Microsoft more serious software. Too bad they apparently don’t believe it must be quality controlled more seriously than games. Is it all just the same code to them? Something to make money selling? With little regard for the potential loss of intellectual property, should it fail. There’s a lot more at stake here, than the loss of one’s high scores. But you can be sure that Microsoft won’t be indemnifying any of its customers for their loss.