Cases4 cases

1 to 4 of 4

1. IL-0570 Dropping an unused MySQL table stalled queries on its busy parent table and crowdworks.jp was hard to reach for a minute

   CrowdWorks2026

   Symptoms

   Right after a deploy ran a migration with drop_table to remove a table that was no longer used, database queries started to pile up and crowdworks.jp was hard to reach for about a minute. The migration finally failed on a timeout and the service recovered on its own.

   Lock contention or deadlockIntermittent connection failures

   Trigger

   An engineer's deploy ran a migration that used drop_table to delete a table no longer in use.

   Root cause

   Faulty deployment

   Component

   DatabaseSchema migration

   Contributing factor

   –

   Action items

   • In migrations that may take an exclusive MDL on a high-traffic table, through DDL on the table, adding or removing a foreign key to it, or creating or dropping a table with such a foreign key, run SET SESSION lock_wait_timeout = 3 first
   • Write these migrations with def up and def down instead of def change, setting the timeout before the DDL in both
   • Put only one such DDL in each migration
   • Release migrations that contain such DDL on their own
   • Run them during low-traffic hours
   • Document the rules in db/migrate/README.md
   • Point AGENTS.md at that README so Copilot and other AI agents review migrations against it
   • Add the check to the automatic comment posted on pull requests that change db/migrate

   View case
2. IL-0369 Railway's backend API went down when a column migration waited on locks and replicas could not get database connections

   Railway2025

   Symptoms

   At 15:18 UTC on 9 December 2025, Railway's backend replicas became unhealthy and stopped serving traffic. Dashboard access, CLI operations, logins, the API and the processing of GitHub-based deployments were disrupted, while running deployments stayed online.

   Probe failuresLock contention or deadlockDatabase overloadService outage

   Trigger

   Engineers merged a database schema change with a data migration at 15:03 UTC, and the migration began applying at 15:17 UTC. It added a nullable column to a heavily used table of about 1 billion rows.

   Root cause

   Faulty deployment

   Component

   DatabaseDatabase proxy and connection poolerSchema migrationLiveness and readiness probes

   Contributing factor

   Health check tied to a dependency

   Action items

   • Increase database connections and reconfigure PgBouncer to work within those limits
   • Fix the long-running query so it no longer causes row lock issues

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3. IL-0524 An index migration locked Open Collective's whole Transactions table and degraded the service for nearly an hour

   Open Collective2023

   Symptoms

   At 09:20 UTC on 4 April 2023, seven minutes after a deployment was triggered, Open Collective's service degraded: a migration in the deployment had locked the entire Transactions table in the production database.

   Lock contention or deadlockDatabase overload

   Trigger

   A deployment ran a migration that dropped indexes on the Transactions table and re-created them with CONCURRENTLY, excluding soft-deleted rows.

   Root cause

   Faulty deployment

   Component

   DatabaseSchema migration

   Contributing factor

   Missed in reviewUnrepresentative staging

   Detection

   The degradation of service was noticed at 09:20 UTC, seven minutes after the deployment was triggered.

   Remediation

   • Killed the migration, though the table remained locked
   • Put the frontend into maintenance mode to limit queries
   • Closed the other connections to the database
   • Cancelled the new index creation and restored the old index
   • Restored the frontend and confirmed the issue was resolved

   Action items

   • Add a script that simulates production load locally, using a tool like vegeta
   • Run this kind of migration during specific maintenance windows
   • Create the new index first and drop the old one afterwards in future migrations
   • Insist on a review from another engineer before merging such a pull request

   Lessons

   Dropping the old index before creating the new one was too optimistic under constant production queries, even with CONCURRENTLY, and an unreviewed pull request let it through. Tests locally and on staging did not show the problem because there were no tools to run migrations in stressed environments. Putting the frontend in maintenance mode limited the impact while showing users a clear message.

   View case
4. IL-0391 GoCardless API requests timed out for about 15 seconds while a Postgres migration waited for an AccessExclusive lock

   GoCardless2015

   Symptoms

   Just after a planned Postgres schema migration started, GoCardless received alerts that API requests were timing out. The API was down for about 15 seconds, until the migration went through and the API came back.

   Lock contention or deadlockService outage

   Trigger

   A deploy with a schema migration that renamed the empty invoicing tables and dropped and recreated their foreign key constraints, which referenced some of the most heavily used tables.

   Root cause

   Faulty deployment

   Component

   DatabaseSchema migration

   Contributing factor

   Unverified assumption

   Detection

   Alerts about API requests timing out began just after the schema migration started.

   Lessons

   Avoiding renames of tables in use, table rewrites under an exclusive lock and expensive work while holding one was not enough for GoCardless: a short DDL statement can still cause downtime by waiting in the lock queue behind a long-running query. GoCardless recommends removing long-running queries and transactions from the application and running analytics on an asynchronously updated replica, setting log_min_duration_statement and log_lock_waits to find such queries, setting lock_timeout in migration scripts so a deploy aborts rather than taking the application down, splitting schema changes so locks are held for shorter times, and keeping Postgres up to date. Developers with a console on the production database can cause the same downtime by leaving a transaction open.

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