Edgio bankruptcy results in endpoint change for Microsoft

Microsoft left an unwelcome gift under the tree for .NET developers – an "unexpected" change to the distribution of installers and archives, which could hit production systems.

The blog from Richard Lander, Principal Program Manager for .NET Core at Microsoft, was posted on December 26 and warned that azureedge.net domains could have downtime "in the near term" meaning that dotnetcli.azureedge.net and dotnetbuilds.azureedge.net would be affected.

The first thing to do is check for azureedge.net references in project files – source code, install scripts, Dockerfiles, etc. If it's there, it'll probably need to be changed to the appropriate microsoft.com instance. The new CDN for official builds is builds.dotnet.microsoft.com, and for CI builds, it is ci.dot.net.

Lander noted that the .NET install script had been updated, as had the CI installer for GitHub Actions. GitHub Enterprise Server and Azure DevOps UseDotnetTask would be dealt with in January. The company does not yet have a date for updating Azure DevOps Server.

Microsoft hoped that most users would be unaffected, although even the company's Vice President of Developer Community, Scott Hanselman, found himself making a swift, if painless, change to his projects.

Lander apologized on behalf of Microsoft for the problem, which for context, seems rooted in decisions taken years ago.

"We are sorry that we are making changes that affect running infrastructure and asking you to react to them during a holiday period. As you can see, the need for these changes was unexpected and we are trying to make the best choices under a very compressed schedule."

• Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did
• Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list
• The winner of last year's Windows Ugly Sweater is ...
• Microsoft Edge takes a victory lap with some high-looking usage stats for 2024

Lander added: "With every crisis, there are opportunities for learning. We realized that we are missing public documentation on how to best use all of the installation-related resources we provide, to balance reliability, security, performance, and productivity. We will be working on producing this documentation in the new year."

The problem has been caused by the surprise retirement of Azure CDN from Edgio. Edgio filed for bankruptcy in the latter half of 2024, with Akamai acquiring "select assets" in December. These didn't include Edgio's technology, personnel, or "assets related to the Edgio network."

The retirement of Azure CDN from Edgio had been set for November 4, 2025. However, in December, Microsoft was informed that the Edgio platform would end service on January 15, 2025. Worse, the company could not guarantee that Edgio wouldn't suddenly shut down before then.

In a GitHub post (https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/9671) devoted to the issue, a user asked the obvious question: why not just keep the old domain, "why would a domain change be needed? couldn't the old domain name not simply resolved [sic] to the new servers?"

Lander replied, "We asked the same question. We were told that this option wasn't being made available. We don't have more information on that."

Happy New Year! ®