Multiple services experiencing connectivity issues in multiple regions

Update timeline

1. monitoring Sep 30, 2026, 08:30 PM UTC

   We are investigating an alert for Azure ExpressRoute Gateway in multiple Azure regions. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

2. monitoring Sep 30, 2026, 08:30 PM UTC

   Starting at 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026, customers using ExpressRoute and/or Azure VPN Gateway may experience degraded or interrupted connectivity. We are also seeing impact to components responsible for managing network gateways, which may affect some management operations. Our investigation has identified a correlation between the onset of impact and infrastructure ‘operating system’ servicing activity. During this activity, some network gateway instances became unhealthy or temporarily unavailable. We have observed different recovery behavior across the affected services. Many impacted ExpressRoute gateways are recovering as the servicing operation completes. However, some supporting management components have not recovered automatically, and we are actively working to restore those components. Our current working hypothesis is that infrastructure operating system servicing is triggering an unexpected condition in some network service instances. We have not yet confirmed the underlying failure mechanism and are continuing to investigate why affected instances became unhealthy and why recovery behavior differs between services. We have paused further operating system servicing associated with this activity to prevent new instances from entering the affected servicing workflow. In parallel, our engineering teams are restoring network management components that have not recovered automatically as well as evaluating additional recovery actions for resources that remain unhealthy. We are continuing to monitor recovery across the affected services and will provide additional information within the next 30 minutes or as events warrant.

3. monitoring Sep 30, 2026, 08:30 PM UTC

   Starting at 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026, customers using ExpressRoute and/or VPN Gateway may experience degraded or interrupted network connectivity. Customers may also experience failures or delays when performing some network management operations. Current status: We have paused the infrastructure servicing activity associated with the onset of this event, preventing additional resources from entering the affected servicing workflow. We are seeing continued recovery across impacted ExpressRoute gateways and are monitoring this recovery to confirm that it remains durable. For VPN Gateway, some affected gateways have experienced reduced redundancy rather than a complete loss of connectivity. Recovery continues to be monitored. Some supporting network management components have not recovered automatically and are contributing to management operation failures in a subset of affected regions. Engineering teams are actively restoring these components using alternate healthy instances where available. Our investigation continues to show a correlation between this event and infrastructure operating system servicing activity. However, the underlying failure mechanism has not yet been confirmed. We are investigating why some network service instances became unhealthy and why recovery behavior has differed between services. We will provide additional information within the next 30 minutes, or sooner if events warrant.

4. postmortem Oct 01, 2026, 02:15 AM UTC

   Incorrect Region: correction: Impacted region(s) within a previous communication has been corrected. What happened? Between 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026 and 02:15 UTC on 01 October 2026, a subset of customers using gateway services in multiple regions experienced degraded or interrupted network connectivity. Impacted customers may have observed gateways failing to load in the Azure Portal, along with failures or delays in network management operations across the following impacted services. • Azure ExpressRoute Gateway • Azure Firewall • Azure Application Gateway and Web Application Firewall • Azure VPN Gateway • Azure VMware Solution What do we know so far? Our investigation identified that a recent change to a regional gateway management service triggered a higher-than-expected load when an unrelated operating system servicing maintenance proceeded gradually through multiple regions. Normally, this gateway management service would auto scale as needed. Demand on dependent services increased due to the increased workload, preventing these regional services from scaling as expected. The operating system servicing maintenance was paused as a precaution. We reverted the contributing regional gateway manager change, which reduced gateway manager load and allowed affected services to recover. We are continuing to investigate the scaling behavior and the safeguards needed to help prevent recurrence. How did we respond? • 20:30 UTC on 30 September 2026 – Customer impact began. • 21:29 UTC on 30 September 2026 – We began investigating connectivity issues affecting Azure ExpressRoute Gateway in UK South. • 22:27 UTC on 30 September 2026 – We identified that the issue was affecting multiple Azure regions and expanded our investigation. • 23:05 UTC on 30 September 2026 – We identified a correlation with operating system servicing activity and paused further servicing while we worked to restore affected services. • 01:36 UTC on 01 October 2026 – Recovery progressed across most affected regions, while configuration changes were applied to remaining impacted regions, including France Central, North Europe, Southeast Asia, UK South, and UK West. • 02:15 UTC on 01 October 2026 – We confirmed that the issue was mitigated. What happens next? • Our team will be completing an internal retrospective to understand the incident in more detail. Once that is completed, generally within 14 days, we will publish a Post Incident Review (PIR) to all impacted customers. • To get notified when that happens, and/or to stay informed about future Azure service issues, make sure that you configure and maintain Azure Service Health alerts – these can trigger emails, SMS, push notifications, webhooks, and more: https://aka.ms/ash-alerts. • For more information on Post Incident Reviews, refer to https://aka.ms/AzurePIRs. • The impact times above represent the full incident duration, so are not specific to any individual customer. Actual impact to service availability may vary between customers and resources – for guidance on implementing monitoring to understand granular impact: https://aka.ms/AzPIR/Monitoring • Finally, for broader guidance on preparing for cloud incidents, refer to https://aka.ms/incidentreadiness.