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Microsoft: Cloud services charge 775% more; Prioritization rules apply due to COVID-19

Microsoft is giving additional advice on the capacity constraints it is imposing on its cloud resources as the corona virus pandemic causes more demand than usual. According to Microsoft representatives, the demand for cloud services in regions with social distance and / or protection increased by 775% due to the COVID-19 corona virus. On March 28, officials also announced some of the temporary restrictions on cloud services that Microsoft introduced after the pandemic. In a blog post on March 28, officials said that the demand for the new use of the Windows virtual desktop had increased more than three times. They also said that government use of public Power BI to release COVID-19 dashboards grew 42% in a week. (As with the total number of Microsoft Cloud services, we don't have a base number for WVD and Power BI from which these percentages can be calculated.)

Officials admitted last week that the company is restricting certain "non-essential" Office 365 services to continue to meet demand. A number of Azure customers in Europe have also restricted attempts to run virtual machines and other services as Microsoft has prioritized health-related workloads given the COVID 19 pandemic. In the March 28 release, Microsoft employees explained in more detail how the priority criteria affect Azure customers. From the post: “We are implementing some temporary restrictions to achieve the best possible experience for all of our customers. We have limited free offers to prioritize the capacity of existing customers. We also have restrictions on certain resources for new subscriptions. Flexible quota limits and customers can make support requests to increase these limits. If requests cannot be met immediately, we encourage customers to use alternative regions (among our 54 active regions) where demand may be lower. Accelerate new capacity creation in the region. ""

(Or, as officials have said publicly since last year, when Azure was already experiencing capacity problems in the eastern United States: "We're constantly expanding capacity.") In addition to the virtual machine capacity issues that some Azure customers are facing, other users around the world have reported in recent weeks that they are experiencing capacity constraints when creating SQL Server databases. on Azure. A number of discussions in Microsoft support forums include reports from customers using the free SQL Server trial and reaching this limit, as well as other existing customers using paid versions of SQL Server. Some users have reported that they have reached this limit regardless of the region. Some users have stated in their posts that they are wondering if Azure has crashes that prevent them from creating a SQL database in Azure. When I asked Microsoft employees about these SQL issues in Azure, they told me about Azure's blog post last week that highlighted the need to prioritize healthcare workloads. The officials had no further comments beyond this post.

Microsoft employees said in the March 28 release, that the company had not found any significant disruptions in cloud services despite the surge in demand. They found that in some regions "they are observing that the provision of certain types of computing resources in these regions falls below our typical success rates of 99.99%". They also found that they are monitoring usage patterns so that they can further optimize game services so as not to burden Azure's overall capacity.

Microsoft: Cloud services charge 775% more; Prioritization rules apply due to COVID-19

Microsoft is giving additional advice on the capacity constraints it is imposing on its cloud resources as the corona virus pandemic causes more demand than usual. According to Microsoft representatives, the demand for cloud services in regions with social distance and / or protection increased by 775% due to the COVID-19 corona virus. On March 28, officials also announced some of the temporary restrictions on cloud services that Microsoft introduced after the pandemic. In a blog post on March 28, officials said that the demand for the new use of the Windows virtual desktop had increased more than three times. They also said that government use of public Power BI to release COVID-19 dashboards grew 42% in a week. (As with the total number of Microsoft Cloud services, we don't have a base number for WVD and Power BI from which these percentages can be calculated.)

Officials admitted last week that the company is restricting certain "non-essential" Office 365 services to continue to meet demand. A number of Azure customers in Europe have also restricted attempts to run virtual machines and other services as Microsoft has prioritized health-related workloads given the COVID 19 pandemic. In the March 28 release, Microsoft employees explained in more detail how the priority criteria affect Azure customers. From the post: “We are implementing some temporary restrictions to achieve the best possible experience for all of our customers. We have limited free offers to prioritize the capacity of existing customers. We also have restrictions on certain resources for new subscriptions. Flexible quota limits and customers can make support requests to increase these limits. If requests cannot be met immediately, we encourage customers to use alternative regions (among our 54 active regions) where demand may be lower. Accelerate new capacity creation in the region. ""

(Or, as officials have said publicly since last year, when Azure was already experiencing capacity problems in the eastern United States: "We're constantly expanding capacity.") In addition to the virtual machine capacity issues that some Azure customers are facing, other users around the world have reported in recent weeks that they are experiencing capacity constraints when creating SQL Server databases. on Azure. A number of discussions in Microsoft support forums include reports from customers using the free SQL Server trial and reaching this limit, as well as other existing customers using paid versions of SQL Server. Some users have reported that they have reached this limit regardless of the region. Some users have stated in their posts that they are wondering if Azure has crashes that prevent them from creating a SQL database in Azure. When I asked Microsoft employees about these SQL issues in Azure, they told me about Azure's blog post last week that highlighted the need to prioritize healthcare workloads. The officials had no further comments beyond this post.

Microsoft employees said in the March 28 release, that the company had not found any significant disruptions in cloud services despite the surge in demand. They found that in some regions "they are observing that the provision of certain types of computing resources in these regions falls below our typical success rates of 99.99%". They also found that they are monitoring usage patterns so that they can further optimize game services so as not to burden Azure's overall capacity.