<p>A row of servers packed into racks within a Microsoft data center module. On Tuesday Microsoft's email services experienced an outage when a parts of a data center overheated. (Photo: Microsoft)</p><p>The Hotmail servers got entirely too hot Tuesday, causing a major outage for Microsoft's web-based email services. Both Hotmail and Outlook.com were offline for up to 16 hours after a failed software update caused the heat to spike in one part of a data center supporting those services. The outage also affected the Skydrive cloud storage service.</p><p>The temperature rose so swiftly that Microsoft was unable to implement automated failover processes designed to shift workloads within its infrastructure, according to an incident report posted on the Outlook.com blog.</p><p>Microsoft said the problems were focused on a single data center, where software managing the facility's physical plant was receiving a firmware upgrade. Although previous updates had gone smoothly, this update "failed in an unexpected way," according to Microsoft's Arthur de Haan.</p><p><a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/03/14/heat-spike-in-data-center-caused-hotmail-outage/">Keep reading...</a></p>