Changes / Close / Database issues
Close: Critical incident: Database issues
Summary
Close reported a critical database incident affecting the API and Application UI, starting 2026-03-16 16:08 UTC and resolved at 16:55 UTC (47 min). Its postmortem states all users experienced severe disruption from 15:57 to 16:15 UTC, with automated systems restoring functionality by 16:15 UTC; normal performance was confirmed at resolution.
Machine-written from the diff below (Sol; type: incident outage). Check the diff before relying on it.
What changed
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After: Database issues
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After: critical
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After: postmortem
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After: 2026-03-16 16:08 UTC
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After: 2026-03-16 16:55 UTC
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After: API, Application UI
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After: We are currently investigating this issue.
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After: We are investigating the issue and seeing some recovery.
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After: Database infrastructure is operational.
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After: Close services continue to recover. Most customers should see normal performance. Close Engineering continues to monitor the recovery.
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After: This incident is resolved. Close has returned to normal performance.
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After: # Summary
Close sincerely apologizes for the interruption of our service. We take the stability of our platform very seriously. Below is an explanation of what happened and how we will prevent another such interruption from occurring.
The Close App and API were severely disrupted for all users for 18 minutes between 15:57 and 16:15 UTC on Monday March 16, 2026. Automated systems restored functionality by 16:15 UTC.
# Incident Timeline
| Time \(UTC\) | Event |
| --- | --- |
| 2026-03-16 | |
| 15:57:00 | **Automated Database Maintenance begins** |
| 15:58:42 | **Incident detected by monitoring** |
| 15:58:49 | **Escalation acknowledged by Close Engineering On-Call** |
| 16:02:41 | **Incident accepted by Close Engineering** |
| 16:15:00 | **Affected database restored to normal operation** |
| 17:09:22 | **Incident resolved** |
# Root Cause and Resolution
At ~15:57 UTC an automated database maintenance process began that starved our production database cluster of resources. This caused our primary instance and both replica instances of the production cluster to become unavailable for ~18 minutes. The system recovered and began performing normally at 16:15 UTC.
To prevent this from happening in the future Close Engineering has provisioned additional resources to the affected database cluster to make it more resilient to sudden demand spikes. Close Engineering will also perform an audit of the maintenance process' configuration to identify opportunities to reduce its impact on system performance.
First version of this incident archived by Rewindex. View the live incident.
History of this incident
| When (UTC) | Change | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Critical incident: Database issues (this change) Close reported a critical database incident affecting the API and Application UI, starting 2026-03-16 16:08 UTC and resolved at 16:55 UTC (47 min). Its postmortem states all users experienced severe disruption from 15:57 to 16:15 UTC, with automated systems restoring functionality by 16:15 UTC; normal performance was confirmed at resolution. | Major incident |