Microsoft Fabric service hit multi-hour outage across all regions
Microsoft posted updates on its Fabric support page starting at 07:37 AM PDT on May 18. The page recorded service degradation affecting every region, with further notices at 11:30, 12:30, 14:00 and 16:00 confirming partial fixes. Separate problems hit UK South semantic models and East US Spark jobs. Full stability was expected by the next scheduled update at 12:00 PM PDT on May 19. Power BI now sits under the same support structure as the rest of Fabric.
Until now most analysts treated Power BI refreshes as a local Desktop or workspace problem. When something broke they waited for the gateway or blamed their own query steps. That separation has ended. Fabric status pages now cover Power BI, which means a lakehouse pipeline issue or Spark job backlog can delay the dashboard your boss expects at 9 a.m., even if your own data model is clean.
Analysis
Build a one-page Excel version of your most critical metric today so you are never blocked by a Fabric-wide incident. Then spend thirty minutes this week importing that same metric through a fresh Power Query connection instead of the inherited 200-step file.
Citation
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