Categories
Collaboration Database Troubleshooting

Fixing Database Replication

(6/20-6/20)

Challenge

Usually our MySQL->Postgres data replication powering the business’s analytics dashboard runs without issue. One day, it completely failed.

Action

  • Spotted AWS alert notification and worked with Data Engineer to realize it wasn’t a normal hiccup in our replication pipeline.
  • Stopped the AWS DMS task for replication.
  • Examined Cloudwatch logs to see if we could find direction as to where the problem was. This told us there was a table (awsdms_apply_exceptions) that didn’t exist.
  • Dug into online documentation about the issue.
  • Created a new Postgres copy target of the analytics database.
  • Created a new AWS DMS task with the copy target DB which should create table public.awsdms_apply_exceptions.
  • Grabbed the DDL statement (e.g. CREATE TABLE) for the awsdms_apply_exceptions table.
  • In the (original) analytics DB, created the ‘public’ schema
  • Also in the (original) analytics DB, applied the CREATE TABLE for awsdms_apply_exceptions.
  • Deleted 1) the new Postgres copy target and 2) the AWS DMS task as cleanup.
  • (Never did figure out why the public schema and table disappeared.)

Results

  • Resolved data replication issue leading to minimal downtime for analytics dashboard.
Categories
Emails Process Site Reliability Troubleshooting

Flying Blind

(Decorist : 5/19-10/19)

Challenge

Lack of logging/monitoring (including for email sending/deliverability) made it impossible to know if integrations were affecting system/application uptime.

Action

Odd for an email marketing company: stakeholders would ask about email deliverability and engineering had no insight because no loggging/tracking had ever been instrumented.

Planned initiatve for adding integration monitoring while digging deep into application code and Amazon SES, instrumenting new features going forward, but given time and resource constratints, not retrofitting existing ones.

Results

  • Created visibility into metrics for company’s key component: email marketing.