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Google Cloud explains how it accidentally deleted a customer account (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Earlier this month, Google Cloud experienced one of its biggest blunders ever when UniSuper, a $135 billion Australian pension fund, had its Google Cloud account wiped out due to some kind of mistake on Google's end. At the time, UniSuper indicated it had lost everything it had stored with Google, even its backups, and that caused two weeks of downtime for its 647,000 members. There were joint statements from the Google Cloud CEO and UniSuper CEO on the matter, a lot of apologies, and presumably a lot of worried customers who wondered if their retirement fund had disappeared.

UniSuper's mistake was relying too much on Google Cloud even for critical backups.

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[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 26 points 5 months ago (6 children)

During the initial deployment of a Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) Private Cloud for the customer using an internal tool, there was an inadvertent misconfiguration of the GCVE service by Google operators due to leaving a parameter blank. This had the unintended and then unknown consequence of defaulting the customer’s GCVE Private Cloud to a fixed term, with automatic deletion at the end of that period. The incident trigger and the downstream system behavior have both been corrected to ensure that this cannot happen again.

Your data is safe in the cloud with multiple redundant backups, unless your account is marked as delinquent which will be deleted immediately and irrevocably.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago (5 children)

That's not what I got out of that at all. It looks more like an errant setting made the account expire automatically after some amount of time, triggering the wipe.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Errant settings that marked the account as delinquent/unpaid at the end of the month, triggering immediate and irrecoverable account deletion. Basically, the scariest part of the google cloud is if they think you can't pay anymore, even if it's a mistake, your account will be wiped along with the backups. They did say they'll have more safeguard after this, but finger crossed.

[–] ech@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Fixed Term" does not mean "delinquent". It just means there's a hard cut off. All I know is the snippet you posted, though, so maybe there's more to the situation.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

When the account is marked as missed the assigned fixed payment term, it's basically a delinquent account, right?

[–] ech@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Unless I'm misunderstanding it myself, fixed term means they had a set period of time that's not up for renewal. Ergo, when the term runs out, that's it. There's no chance of delinquency because there's no additional payments.

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