Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Typo in case-sensitive variable name cooked Google's cloud

Patch to Container Engine needed just one more item of shift key action

Google has admitted that incorrectly typing the name of a case-sensitive variable cooked its cloud.

Users of the Alphabet subsidiary's Google Container Engine customers “could not create external load balancers for their services for a duration of 21 hours and 38 min” on December 8th and 9th.

The mess started when Google implemented “a minor update to the Compute Engine API” that underpins its Container Engine. That update “inadvertently changed the case-sensitivity of the “sessionAffinity” enum variable in the target pool definition, and this variation was not covered by testing.”

“Google Container Engine was not aware of this change and sent requests with incompatible case, causing the Compute Engine API to return an error status.”

It took a rollback of the system to get it up again. Later investigation revealed the typo.

Google's incident report says “this is not the level of quality and reliability we strive to offer you, and we have taken and are taking immediate steps to improve the platform’s performance and availability.”

Might those steps include training in proof-reading, or extra instruction on how to use the shift key? ®

Bootnote: Yes, we are aware El Reg is not always a paragon of purity, and that there is probably a pot-kettle-black mistake in this very story.

 

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like