Container deployment stuck for hours today

Hello Tamal Majumder,

I understand you're encountering an issue where your Azure Container Instances (ACI) deployment is stuck and your existing containers are not starting up. It's definitely frustrating when services don't behave as expected.

While there have been no widespread outages reported on the official Azure status page for today, September 10, 2025, issues like the one you are describing can sometimes be intermittent or specific to a region or even a particular cluster within Azure's infrastructure. Users have reported similar "stuck" or "pending" states for their container instances in the past.

Here are a few troubleshooting steps you can take to diagnose and potentially resolve the problem:

Check Service Health in your Portal: First, check the Azure Service Health dashboard within your own Azure portal. It provides a personalized view of the health of the Azure services and regions you use.

Stop and Restart the Container Group: A common and effective first step is to manually stop and then start your container group. This action can redeploy your container group to a new, potentially healthier host on the Azure backend.

Review Logs and Events: You can often find specific error messages by checking the logs and events for your container group. Use the Azure CLI to get more details : az container logs --resource-group <your-resource-group> --name <your-container-group-name>

Check Regional Capacity and Quotas: The issue might be related to resource constraints in the specific Azure region you are deploying to, or your subscription might have reached its quota for resources like CPU cores or memory. Consider trying to deploy in a different region to see if the problem persists.

Verify the Image: Ensure that the container image exists in the registry and that the image name is typed correctly in your deployment configuration. A long delay can sometimes be caused by issues pulling the image.

If you continue to experience this problem after trying these steps, the best course of action is to open a support ticket with Azure Support. They have access to the backend telemetry and can investigate the root cause of the deployment failure.

For more detailed guidance, you can also refer to the official Microsoft documentation for troubleshooting Azure Container Instances.

I hope this information helps you get your containers running again.

Best regards,

Jerald Felix

Hi Tamal Majumder,

The problem of yours where the Azure Container Instances (ACI) deployment is stuck and existing containers are not starting up can be due to connectivity issues in certain regions.

At the moment, Microsoft has confirmed that connectivity issues are affecting Azure services in certain regions due to undersea cable disruptions in the Red Sea (Sept 6, 2025). While the Azure Status page may not always show it immediately, these network-level issues can cause long delays in deployments and container startups, especially in regions like India, the Middle East, and nearby areas.

At present, Microsoft has confirmed that Azure services in regions such as South India, Central India, UAE, and nearby Middle East regions are impacted due to major undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea on September 6, 2025. These cables (SEA-ME-WE-4 and IMEWE) carry a large portion of traffic between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, and the damage has caused increased latency, slow deployments, and connectivity issues.

You can also check out this page for further information: Azure status

Kindly follow the steps below to troubleshoot your issue (if you haven’t checked out these):

1.Check Azure Service Health: In the Azure Portal, go to Service Health to check if there are any active incidents in the region you are deploying to.

For more information, refer this: Azure Service Health Portal Classic Experience Overview - Azure Service Health | Microsoft Learn

2.Restart the Container Group: Stop and restart the container group. This forces Azure to redeploy it to a healthier backend host.

3.Check Logs and Events for Errors: Use the CLI to check if there are specific errors during container startup:

az container logs --resource-group <your-rg> --name <your-container-group>

For more information, refer this: Get container instance logs & events - Azure Container Instances | Microsoft Learn

4.Validate Container Image: confirm that the image exists, the name is correct, and the registry is accessible. Sometimes “pen ding” states can be due to issues pulling the image.

For more information, refer this: Deploy container image from Azure Container Registry using a service principal - Azure Container Instances | Microsoft Learn

5.Check Regional Capacity or Quotas: Verify the subscription you are using has completed quota limits (vCPUs, memory, etc.).

For more information, refer this: Troubleshoot common issues - Azure Container Instances | Microsoft Learn

6.Try Another Region (Mitigation for Current Issue): Due to the ongoing undersea cable cuts, try deploying your container group in a different Azure region (e.g., East US, West Europe). This can help to bypass routing issues that are causing deployments in your current region.

If none of these above steps resolve the problem, opening a support ticket with Azure Support would help as they have access to backend telemetry and can confirm if your subscription/region is directly affected by the current incident.

For more information, refer this: How to create an Azure support request - Azure supportability | Microsoft Learn

Kindly check the above steps and references provided to troubleshoot your issue. Let me know if you require any additional assistance from my end. I am happy to help you with the queries. If the information is helpful, please click on Upvote and Accept Answer on it so that it can help other community members.

Thanks,

Rashmika