Learn from Foursquare

The Day Foursquare
Went Dark: A MongoDB Nightmare

In 2010, Foursquare suffered an 11-hour outage due to MongoDB performance issues. Incident Drill helps your team prepare for and prevent similar database disasters through realistic incident simulations.

Foursquare | 2010 | Outage (Database)

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The Perils of Unpreparedness

Database outages can be crippling. They lead to lost revenue, damaged reputation, and stressed engineering teams. Understanding the root causes and practicing effective response strategies are crucial for maintaining service reliability.

PREPARE YOUR TEAM

Practice Makes Perfect with Incident Drill

Incident Drill provides a platform to simulate realistic incidents, like the Foursquare MongoDB outage. Your team will learn to identify bottlenecks, optimize queries, and implement robust database management strategies under pressure, ensuring faster recovery times and reduced impact.

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Realistic Simulations

Experience incidents based on real-world failures.

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Hands-on Practice

Dive into the code and debug real issues.

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Time-boxed Scenarios

Learn to prioritize and make critical decisions under pressure.

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Performance Analysis

Identify performance bottlenecks and optimize database queries.

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Collaborative Debugging

Work together as a team to resolve complex incidents.

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Post-Mortem Analysis

Learn from mistakes and improve future incident response.

WHY TEAMS PRACTICE THIS

Unleash a More Resilient Engineering Team

✓ Reduce downtime and improve service reliability
✓ Enhance team collaboration and communication
✓ Improve incident response skills and knowledge
✓ Identify and address potential vulnerabilities proactively
✓ Build confidence in handling critical incidents
✓ Minimize the impact of future outages

2010-04-16 12:00 UTC

Initial MongoDB performance degradation. ERROR

2010-04-16 14:00 UTC

RAM usage spikes on primary MongoDB instance. ERROR

2010-04-16 16:00 UTC

Primary MongoDB instance crashes due to OOM. ERROR

2010-04-16 23:00 UTC

Service restored after query optimization and RAM increase. RESOLVED

How It Works

Step 1: Incident Briefing

Understand the context of the Foursquare MongoDB outage.

Step 2: Root Cause Analysis

Identify the key factors that contributed to the incident.

Step 3: Implement Solutions

Apply fixes to resolve the simulated database performance issues.

Step 4: Post-Mortem Review

Discuss lessons learned and improve future incident response.

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Related Incidents

Ready to Master Incident Response?

Join the Incident Drill waitlist and be among the first to access our realistic incident simulations. Prepare your team for anything!

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The Day Foursquare Went Dark: A MongoDB Nightmare