Microsoft Network Hit By Massive Outage Redmond WA Aug 15 2003
Approximately 4:15pm last night, the Microsoft network suffered a massive outage. The Redmond-based company lost all connectivity to the Internet as well as most internal networks. The outage effected its world headquarters in Redmond, as well as remote offices including Vancouver. "It has been pretty orderly" says Ralph Seakins, a Microsoft employee who was trapped in a parking lot. The effects of the outage have been far reaching, including disabling the network-aware parking lot gates. Thousands of employees were unable to take their cars home. Others have been trapped in the company's cafeteria, unable to pass the turnstiles. A KIRO news helicopter flying over the main campus witnessed just how orderly it was. Microsoft engineers could be seen in the grassy areas between building carrying giant white boards and digital cameras. "We're going to continue to code, even without our computers" indicated Dolf Whitney, a software engineer. "Currently, we're writing our code on these white boards. Then we'll take pictures of the white boards and transscribe them later." While Microsoft gave no official word on the outage, Canadian officials indicated that there was a surge of good code in Building 16 on the Redmond campus. This surge apparently overwelmed the local network, and caused a cascading failure enterprise wide. Parts of the Microsoft network were coming online Friday morning, but it is unclear as to whether work would resume as normal before the weekend. "A clue surge like that is hard to surpress," said Micheal Flowery, a network engineer with the software manufacturer. "There has been a lot of damage. We're talking about hours, not days." In a press conference held at Arnold Schwarzenegger's estate, President Bush indicated that the federal government "will get to the bottom of this". The President expressed frustration regarding the situation and told reporters "There's no excuse for good code."
