Having trouble logging in to Office 365? You aren’t alone.

Topic

New Reply

The official @Office365Status account on Twitter says: https://twitter.com/Office365Status/status/1030112960167854082 There are several possible suspe
[See the full post at: Having trouble logging in to Office 365? You aren’t alone.]

2 users thanked author for this post.

geekdom, Mr. Natural

Reply | Quote

Replies

They have posted an update that the issue is now resolved.

“Users were unable sign-in with their Office 365 clients and may have seen error messages related to subscription status.

Latest message:Title: Issues with Office 365 client sign-in

User Impact: Users were unable sign-in with their Office 365 clients and may have seen error messages related to subscription status.

Current status: Our analysis indicates that sign-in impact is resolved, and users are no longer receiving subscription status errors. While our automated recovery services took the appropriate action to balance active service load and mitigate impact, we’re continuing to monitor the service to ensure complete resolution.

Scope of impact: Impact is specific to a subset of users who are served through the affected infrastructure.

Start time: Thursday, August 16, 2018, at 12:30 PM UTC

Preliminary root cause: A service load balancing issue that impacted connectivity between Office 365 and Azure resulted in client sign-in issues.

Next update by: Thursday, August 16, 2018, at 11:00 PM UTC:

Red Ruffnsore

4 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, geekdom, woody, columbia2011

Reply | Quote

” automated recovery services” In other words they had to scramble and restore from backup just like all Windows users. 🙂

Red Ruffnsore

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, woody

Reply | Quote

That just illustrates one of the big drawbacks of “software as a service,” at least as it is implemented in this case (no fault tolerance).  If the remote server has issues, or if you are having trouble connecting to the internet, which can be caused by a million different issues, you may not be able to use the tools you paid good money to be able to use when you need them the most.  The old, “outdated” model of buy once, install locally, and have it usable locally forever, would not be susceptible to this.  Outages and errors happen, but should it mean businesses that rely on their products should grind completely to a halt until some third party fixes something?

It’s kind of ironic that the locally installed “native” installation had this issue, while the much more obviously connectivity-dependent web version did not.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

9 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Pepsiboy, Cybertooth, geekdom, woody, wdburt1, Microfix, Chronocidal Guy, BobbyB

Reply | Quote

I’ve always found the concept of “remote license management” (or whatever the proper term is in this case) to be unbelievably counterproductive in every way imaginable.

Years back, I spent a week twiddling my thumbs at my desk because the servers running our network were taken offline due to a hurricane.  I work on the west coast.  It was the most teeth-grindingly unproductive week imaginable.  Not only was the network itself offline, but every single computer across every work site in the country was unusable, because all of the login authorizations come from the server.

On the other hand, I will admit, it’s amusing getting “snow days” in southern California because the east cost gets hit with a blizzard that knocks out all the remote sites at once.  Not cost effective, or productive in any way.. but definitely amusing.

“(insert buzzword here) As A Service” is basically an excuse to cram as many single-point-of-failure systems as physically possible into an environment.  I honestly cannot wrap my head around why anyone on the business side would ever consider this a remotely suitable way to operate.

4 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Cybertooth, wdburt1, geekdom

Reply | Quote

Ever heard of the Just-in-time philosophy, used in manufacturing/ production scenarios. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jit.asp

System Disadvantages
The disadvantages of JIT inventories involve disruptions in the supply chain. If a raw materials supplier has a breakdown and cannot deliver the goods on time, one supplier can shut down the entire production process. A sudden order for goods that surpasses expectations may delay delivery of finished products to clients.

I can compare this to WaaS/ cloud computing substituting manufacturing product for digital data with access to it. Once one thing goes wrong service side, everything associated before and after comes to a halt until it’s fixed and nothing moves whilst it’s getting fixed.

Needless to say it didn’t work in Japan nor the US in the 1970’s to 1990’s

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

Just-in-time is good IF you can pull it off successfully. But you have to be prepared for inevitable outages and other failures.

It blows my mind to think of how massive the resources have to be for Microsoft to successfully pull this off. I am amazed that it all works very well just about all of the time.

Subscription status errors could be greatly reduced or eliminated by having a master subscription server, and several sub-master (whatever the name is) servers spread all over the world, with redundancy on each and every server. I wonder how many millions of dollars a set up like that would cost initially to get it all set up and in place, plus how much it costs to operate it 24/7, and repair it as needed.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, Microfix

Reply | Quote

In what was questioned as a temporary fad by many logistics and transportation industry people at the time (me included) but turned out to be a long-term change, US industry shifted to JIT during the Eighties and Nineties.  That controversy is long over.  That said, the extreme version of JIT prevailed in few places.  Many plants have their stash of parts and materials.

At any rate, the analogy to software-as-a-service is inexact at best.  JIT involved materials that had to be delivered by a transportation provider; the only question was when.  WAAS is in contrast to a license, the advantages of which were and are not limited to availability on demand.

Those advantages include being able to set it up as you wish and know that it will still be set up that way tomorrow.  My Office 2003 is still happily chugging along doing the job.  Not once in ten years of daily work with both Word and Excel have I found a feature missing that is provided by later versions, though I concede the possibility.  I have Office 2010 on an installation disk if I need it.  But WAAS for me?  Never.

This episode illustrates the folly of putting the only copy of your assets on someone else’s computer.

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote

Nasty surprise today: an unexpected HUGE update of Office 365 :-((( Yeah, we have really nothing else to do in life then waiting, Microsoft. Thanks.

Reply | Quote