Incident Library
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Cases2 cases

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  1. IL-0060 Kubernetes 1.24 upgrade removed the master node label that Calico route reflectors selected on, dropping all pod routes and taking Reddit down for 314 minutes
    Reddit2023
    Symptoms

    About two minutes after an engineer started the Kubernetes 1.23 to 1.24 upgrade of the cluster running Reddit's legacy stack, just after 19:00 UTC, the site stopped. The CDN edge request graph, which is kept separate from the cluster, showed traffic by status collapsing. Users saw the error page, a homepage with no posts, or plain errors.

    Service outageHigh error rateDNS resolution failuresMonitoring outagePods stuck in ContainerCreatingControl plane lag
    Trigger

    An in-place upgrade of the legacy cluster from Kubernetes 1.23 to 1.24; in 1.24 the node-role.kubernetes.io/master label is removed even from running clusters.

    Root cause
    Breaking change in an upgrade
    Component
    CalicoKubernetes API serverAdmission webhooketcd
    Contributing factor
    Configuration not in codeUnrepresentative stagingUntested backupMonitoring blind spotSingle point of failure
    Detection

    The site broke about two minutes into the upgrade; an incident was opened immediately and responders were on the call within three minutes, working from CDN edge graphs because the cluster's own metrics were gone.

    Remediation
    • deleted the Open Policy Agent webhook configurations to stop API server timeouts
    • terminated all worker nodes of the cluster
    • restored the control plane from the pre-upgrade backup onto the first control plane node
    • switched off the cluster autoscaler until the control plane was stable
    • generated new TLS certificates so replacement control plane nodes could join etcd
    • brought traffic back in steps from 1% to 100%
    • restarted legacy services that had been stopped by hand
    Action items
    • Codify cluster configuration so every choice has a record, and document in detail what cannot be codified
    • Standardise components across clusters and replace bespoke configurations
    • Build tooling to manage the lifecycle of whole clusters so they can be recreated or replicated
    • Add pre-production clusters that can be tested with confidence
    • Improve the backup restore process and make cluster upgrades safe
    Lessons

    Configuration that exists only in a live cluster, edited by hand through a special tool, can be forgotten, as the route reflector setup was, and then break on an upgrade nobody connects it to. A Kubernetes upgrade cannot be reverted without a restore, so the restore procedure has to be kept current and practised. Consistent, codified clusters are what make upgrades testable; bespoke clusters keep producing outages.

    View case
  2. IL-0032 Mutating admission controller generated broken JSON patches, silently blocking deploys for a week until a production service ran down to two pods
    Airbnb2020
    Symptoms

    A production service at Airbnb showed a high error rate and could not be deployed. The deploy failed with a cryptic Kubernetes error about being unable to access invalid index 5.

    High error rateThroughput degradationDeploys failing
    Trigger

    A change to the mutating admission controller, which had been rolled out within the previous month, had gone in seven days before the incident surfaced; when it had to delete two items from an array in a spec, it generated an invalid JSON patch that removed index 2 and then index 3.

    Root cause
    Software defect
    Component
    Admission webhookHorizontal pod autoscaler
    Contributing factor
    Change with a delayed effectMonitoring blind spotIgnored early signal
    Detection

    The affected service reported a high error rate and its deploy failed; the slow degradation of other services over the previous seven days had gone unnoticed.

    Remediation
    • deleted the mutating admission controller from the affected cluster
    Action items
    • Create alerts from the existing metrics that would have shown the problem earlier
    Lessons

    Keep in mind that a mutating admission controller exists in the cluster; a recently added one is easy to forget during an incident. Search for the exact error message early instead of working on the visible symptoms. Page a teammate when progress stalls.

    View case
Check your cluster for this

These 2 cases involve Admission webhook and Calico. kubegap audits a Kubernetes cluster for gaps like these, read-only, from Claude Code or Codex; its checks cite public reports like the ones in this library.

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By root cause2

Breaking change in an upgrade1 case

Component
Admission webhookCalicoetcdKubernetes API server
Contributing factor
Untested backupConfiguration not in codeMonitoring blind spotSingle point of failureUnrepresentative staging
Organisation
Reddit
  1. IL-0060 Kubernetes 1.24 upgrade removed the master node label that Calico route reflectors selected on, dropping all pod routes and taking Reddit down for 314 minutes
    Reddit2023

Software defect1 case

Component
Admission webhookHorizontal pod autoscaler
Contributing factor
Change with a delayed effectIgnored early signalMonitoring blind spot
Organisation
Airbnb
  1. IL-0032 Mutating admission controller generated broken JSON patches, silently blocking deploys for a week until a production service ran down to two pods
    Airbnb2020