Why Our Servers Went Down (And How We Fixed It)

On a Tuesday morning in March 2025, our servers went down. For three hours, our clients couldn't access their systems. This is what happened, why it happened, and what we changed.

The Incident

At 8:47 AM, we got the first alert. A client called: "We can't access our system." We checked our monitoring - everything looked fine. Then another call. And another.

By 9:15 AM, we realized: this wasn't a client issue. This was us.

What Went Wrong

The Root Cause

We had a database update scheduled for the weekend. It was supposed to be a simple migration. It wasn't.

The update script had a bug we didn't catch in testing. When it ran, it corrupted a critical table. The database started failing queries. The application servers couldn't connect. Everything cascaded.

Why We Missed It

1. We tested on a copy of production data, not the real thing: The bug only appeared with our actual data volume.

2. We didn't have a rollback plan: When things went wrong, we had to figure out how to fix it on the fly.

3. Our monitoring didn't catch it early: By the time we knew something was wrong, it was already affecting users.

The Response

Hour 1: Panic

We tried to fix it quickly. We tried to restore from backup. We tried to roll back the change. Nothing worked immediately.

Hour 2: Communication

We sent an email to all clients. We posted updates on our status page. We answered every phone call. Transparency was the only thing we could control.

Hour 3: Resolution

We restored from a backup. We lost some data from the morning, but we got everything back online. Then we started the real work: making sure this never happened again.

What We Changed

1. Better Testing

• We now test on production-like data
• We run migrations in staging first, always
• We have automated tests that catch these issues

2. Rollback Procedures

• Every change has a rollback plan
• We practice rollbacks regularly
• We can revert changes in minutes, not hours

3. Improved Monitoring

• We monitor database health continuously
• We get alerts before users notice problems
• We track metrics that actually matter

4. Communication Plan

• We have templates ready for incidents
• We update clients every 30 minutes during outages
• We do post-mortems and share learnings

The Impact

On Our Clients

Some were understanding. Some were frustrated. All deserved better. We refunded service fees for the affected period. More importantly, we committed to doing better.

On Us

This incident changed how we work. We're more careful. We test more. We plan for failure. We're better because of it.

The Lesson

Mistakes happen. The question isn't whether you'll make them - it's how you handle them. We could have hidden this. We could have made excuses. Instead, we chose transparency and improvement.

Our clients trust us more now because they saw us:

• Take responsibility
• Fix the problem
• Learn from it
• Make real changes

Moving Forward

We're not perfect. We'll make mistakes again. But we're committed to:

• Learning from every incident
• Being transparent with our clients
• Continuously improving our processes
• Never making the same mistake twice

Because that's what trust is built on - not perfection, but honesty and improvement.