Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/15/salesforce_data_outage/
'Database failure ate my data' – Salesforce customer
We're working on it, says cloudy services pusher
Posted in Databases, 15th August 2013 15:04 GMT
An apparent database corruption is being blamed for nearly five hours of severe disruption for Salesforce customers last week.
Users running their applications on Salesforce’s EU3 instance experienced blackouts and intermittent service between 6.21pm and 11.36pm on 5 August.
Salesforce at the time promised customers a "detailed root-cause message".
Since then, however, a user has contacted The Reg to tell us the source of the problem was a corrupted database and claimed that some people had lost their data - albeit just one hour of data – for good.
We were told that rather than announce this to the world, Salesforce had been having a quiet word with those affected to inform them their data has permanently vanished.
The Reg was told Salesforce has had "limited disclosures" with "affected customers".
The reason for the wiped data, our source told us, was that Salesforce had reportedly been unable to bring back either the primary database that was in trouble or the disaster-recovery instance backup that shadowed it, and had to fall back on a backup version that was one-hour old – hence data recorded after that point was lost.
Salesforce would not confirm this version of events.
Salesforce did confirm to the The Reg that it was "working directly with the impacted customers to resolve any issues".
Asked what steps had been taken to prevent a repeat of the incident and whether those who’ve lost vital data would receive any compensation, Salesforce would not say. ®