GitLab Accidentally Deleted Its Own Database... Live on Camera
GitLab, a popular developer platform, accidentally deleted its primary production database while trying to fix replication issues. The incident was live-streamed, and engineers struggled to recover the lost data.
Why it matters
This incident highlights the importance of proper backup and recovery procedures, as well as the need for caution when making changes to production systems.
Key Points
- 1GitLab engineers were trying to fix database replication problems
- 2A command was run that deleted the entire primary production database
- 3Backups were outdated or corrupted, making recovery difficult
- 4GitLab decided to live-stream the recovery efforts in real-time
Details
In 2017, GitLab, a widely used developer platform, faced a database issue and engineers were trying to fix replication problems. During the debugging process, an engineer ran a command that accidentally deleted the primary production database, instead of just a small part. The team thought they could simply restore from backups, but found that the backups were outdated or corrupted, making the recovery process challenging. Rather than hiding the incident, GitLab decided to live-stream the recovery efforts, allowing the entire internet to watch as the engineers panic-debugged and tried various methods to rebuild the database state and recover the lost data. After hours of effort, most of the data was eventually recovered, but the damage had already been done. The root causes were running risky commands directly in production, lack of proper safeguards, and weak backup verification processes.
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