Failed server checks triggered Microsoft outage cascade, BBC reports

The BBC's Singapore correspondent explains how redirected traffic overwhelmed backup servers, disrupting Outlook, Teams and Copilot.

Channel: BBC News Story of November 13, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? One of the most watched videos since yesterday, with 204,637 views.

What we know about the global Microsoft outage | BBC News

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Servers meant to take over when others failed became part of the problem. That is the chain reaction BBC Asia business reporter Archana Shukla describes in the broadcaster's new Microsoft outage report.

Speaking from Singapore, Shukla says some servers failed automatic health checks, sending traffic elsewhere. The servers receiving that extra load could not cope and also went down. Microsoft was seeing only limited recovery, she reports, with fixes taking longer than expected.

The disruption began on Thursday. Reports of problems reached more than 70 countries, affecting workplace communications, school workflows and government public services. Presenter Sarah Campbell notes that Microsoft says it is not aware of malicious activity behind the outage.

The BBC's explainer drew about 200,000 views within three hours of publication today. Beyond listing the affected apps, it offers an explanation for why switching traffic to other servers did not immediately restore them: the fallback systems were overwhelmed too.

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Failed server checks triggered Microsoft outage cascade, BBC reports The full story on Trari: https://trari.com/en/story/bbcnews-36112/

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The numbers

The BBC's outage explainer reached a substantial audience in its first few hours. This is its viewing total so far, not a full day's count.

subscribers

20,300,000

▲ 100,000 in the last 7 days

total views

7,598,823,717

views per day

5,156,131

typical day: 5,215,226

subscribers: this channel and similar channels

BBC News

20,300,000

CNN

20,100,000

ABC News

19,900,000

Fox News

15,600,000

Inside Edition

13,800,000

Vox

12,700,000

As of November 13, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.