Global Akamai Outage

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Sun Jul 25 14:21:57 UTC 2021


Indeed.  Worth rereading for that reason alone (or in particular).

Miles Fidelman

Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> On 23/07/2021 09:24, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
>
> From Akamai.  How companies and vendors should report outages:
>
> [07:35 UTC on July 24, 2021] Update:
>
> Root Cause:
>
> This configuration directive was sent as part of preparation for 
> independent load balancing control of a forthcoming product. Updates 
> to the configuration directive for this load balancing component have 
> routinely been made on approximately a weekly basis. (Further changes 
> to this configuration channel have been blocked until additional 
> safety measures have been implemented, as noted in Corrective and 
> Preventive Actions.)
>
> The load balancing configuration directive included a formatting 
> error. As a safety measure, the load balancing component disregarded 
> the improper configuration and fell back to a minimal configuration. 
> In this minimal state, based on a VIP-only configuration, it did not 
> support load balancing for Enhanced TLS slots greater than 6145.
>
> The missing load balancing data meant that the Akamai authoritative 
> DNS system for the akamaiedge.net zone would not receive any directive 
> for how to respond to DNS queries for many Enhanced TLS slots. The 
> authoritative DNS system will respond with a SERVFAIL when there is no 
> directive, as during localized failures resolvers will retry an 
> alternate authority.
>
> The zoning process used for deploying configuration changes to the 
> network includes an alert check for potential issues caused by the 
> configuration changes. The zoning process did result in alerts during 
> the deployment. However, due to how the particular safety check was 
> configured, the alerts for this load balancing component did not 
> prevent the configuration from continuing to propagate, and did not 
> result in escalation to engineering SMEs. The input safety check on 
> the load balancing component also did not automatically roll back the 
> change upon detecting the error.
>
> Contributing Factors:
>
>     The internal alerting which was specific to the load balancing 
> component did not result in blocking the configuration from 
> propagating to the network, and did not result in an escalation to the 
> SMEs for the component.
>     The alert and associated procedure indicating widespread SERVFAILs 
> potentially due to issues with mapping systems did not lead to an 
> appropriately urgent and timely response.
>     The internal alerting which fired and was escalated to SMEs was 
> for a separate component which uses the load balancing data. This 
> internal alerting initially fired for the Edge DNS system rather than 
> the mapping system, which delayed troubleshooting potential issues 
> with the mapping system and the load balancing component which had the 
> configuration change. Subsequent internal alerts more clearly 
> indicated an issue with the mapping system.
>     The impact to the Enhanced TLS service affected Akamai staff 
> access to internal tools and websites, which delayed escalation of 
> alerts, troubleshooting, and especially initiation of the incident 
> process.
>
> Short Term
>
> Completed:
>
>     Akamai completed rolling back the configuration change at 16:44 
> UTC on July 22, 2021.
>     Blocked any further changes to the involved configuration channel.
>     Other related channels are being reviewed and may be subject to a 
> similar block as reviews take place. Channels will be unblocked after 
> additional safety measures are assessed and implemented where needed.
>
> In Progress:
>
>     Validate and strengthen the safety checks for the configuration 
> deployment zoning process
>     Increase the sensitivity and priority of alerting for high rates 
> of SERVFAILs.
>
> Long Term
>
> In Progress:
>
>     Reviewing and improving input safety checks for mapping components.
>     Auditing critical systems to identify gaps in monitoring and 
> alerting, then closing unacceptable gaps.
>
>
>
>> On 22/07/2021 19:34, Mark Tinka wrote:
>>> https://edgedns.status.akamai.com/
>>>
>>> Mark.
>>
>>
>> [18:30 UTC on July 22, 2021] Update:
>>
>> Akamai experienced a disruption with our DNS service on July 22, 
>> 2021. The disruption began at 15:45 UTC and lasted for approximately 
>> one hour. Affected customer sites were significantly impacted for 
>> connections that were not established before the incident began.
>>
>> Our teams identified that a change made in a mapping component was 
>> causing the issue, and in order to mitigate it we rolled the change 
>> back at approximately 16:44 UTC. We can confirm this was not a 
>> cyberattack against Akamai's platform. Immediately following the 
>> rollback, the platform stabilized and DNS services resumed normal 
>> operations. At this time the incident is resolved, and we are 
>> monitoring to ensure that traffic remains stable.
>


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown



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