Incident Library
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Cases2 cases

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  1. IL-0526 OpenStreetMap.org went offline, then read-only, for 56 hours after HE.net routing equipment cut both fibre uplinks
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2024
    Symptoms

    At 04:01 UTC on 15 December 2024, StatusCake monitoring sent SMS alerts that OpenStreetMap.org was unreachable. The website and the mapping API had gone completely offline at 03:53 UTC.

    Network unreachableService outage
    Trigger

    HE.net's routing equipment in Amsterdam failed at 03:53 UTC on 15 December 2024.

    Root cause
    Dependency failure
    Component
    ISP and transit networksDatabase replication
    Contributing factor
    Single point of failureNo runbook
    Detection

    StatusCake monitoring detected the outage at 04:01 UTC and sent SMS alerts, and the incident was reported to the operations team at once.

    Remediation
    • Activated a read-only backup instance of OpenStreetMap.org in Dublin
    • Brought a new Equinix Internet link into service in Amsterdam, bypassing HE.net and restoring full functionality
    • HE.net replaced its routing hardware and restored its service, and routing through HE.net resumed
    Action items
    • Move to a multi-ISP architecture so another provider can take over when one fails
    • Research backup ISPs for the Amsterdam servers, including BGP and keeping HE.net as a fallback
    • Add deeper route and latency monitoring and an automated escalation protocol
    • Hold failover drills for switching between ISPs and keep replication up to date
    • Agree SLAs with HE.net and Equinix Internet with defined escalation procedures and response times
    • Prepare the 4G out-of-band system as a manual fallback uplink that can sync Postgres replication data, and upgrade its hardware
    • Document outage communication procedures and delegate communication during outages
    • Investigate decoupling the OAuth service so authentication keeps working while the database is read-only
    Lessons

    Relying on HE.net alone left the Amsterdam servers with a single point of failure, so OpenStreetMap will keep multiple upstream providers. The 4G out-of-band link proved invaluable and should be able to carry data synchronisation. Resumed replication would have restored editing faster than the read-only backup. Frequent contact with the ISP gave no useful estimates, so the SLA needs to be better understood. Alerting on upstream connectivity needs refining, and a read-only OpenStreetMap.org also blocked logins to services that were not affected, because it could not save new tokens.

    View case
  2. IL-0525 OpenStreetMap.org went offline for 7h 27m when its uplink switch lost power during a data-centre power feed maintenance
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2022
    Symptoms

    From 20:18 UTC on 11 June 2022, OpenStreetMap.org was unavailable: all of its services hosted in Amsterdam, including www, the API, the wiki and planet, had no connectivity to the Internet. The outage began 18 minutes into Equinix's planned maintenance of power feed A at the Amsterdam data centre.

    Network unreachableService outage
    Trigger

    Equinix's planned 5-year maintenance of power feed A in Amsterdam, which started at 20:00 UTC on 11 June 2022.

    Root cause
    Hardware failure
    Component
    Network switchData center power and cooling
    Contributing factor
    Single point of failureLimited debug accessMonitoring blind spot
    Remediation
    • Waited for the end of the Equinix power feed A maintenance window instead of failing over to Dublin or moving the uplink; connectivity returned at 03:45 UTC
    Action items
    • Acknowledge ongoing outages faster
    • Add monitoring and alerting of switch PSU and FAN states
    • Replace the Cisco SG550X-48 switches and the Redundant Power System with Juniper EX4300 switches with redundant power supplies
    • Install out-of-band access equipment with dual power feeds in Amsterdam
    • Install redundant uplinks
    • Make site failover easier, less manual and lower risk
    • Introduce an on-call pager system for the operations SRE
    • Expand the SRE team
    • Continue and formalise fail-over tests for power, network, upstream link and service outages
    View case
Check your cluster for this

These 2 cases involve Database replication and Data center power and cooling. 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

Dependency failure1 case

Component
Database replicationISP and transit networks
Contributing factor
No runbookSingle point of failure
Organisation
OpenStreetMap Foundation
  1. IL-0526 OpenStreetMap.org went offline, then read-only, for 56 hours after HE.net routing equipment cut both fibre uplinks
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2024

Hardware failure1 case

Component
Data center power and coolingNetwork switch
Contributing factor
Limited debug accessMonitoring blind spotSingle point of failure
Organisation
OpenStreetMap Foundation
  1. IL-0525 OpenStreetMap.org went offline for 7h 27m when its uplink switch lost power during a data-centre power feed maintenance
    OpenStreetMap Foundation2022