The subject was “Data server issues.” The whole message was almost as short.
We had been having issues around the data servers at Shutterstock, and those issues had caused some recent outage. I wanted to talk about it that day.
That was the entire email.
A little more than two weeks earlier, I had sent a separate note about MySQL replication lag. I asked the team to take a hard look and work with developers if necessary. I still do not know whether the replication concern and this outage are connected.
The data work is not settling down. In March I wrote to a group and asked for an investigation. This time I wrote directly to one person and asked for time to talk. Different problem, different audience, and not enough detail yet to connect them.
The exact wording here was careful even if the grammar was rough: “We've been having some issues that have caused some recent outage.” I did not name multiple outages. I did not say every data server was failing. I did not name a product, a customer impact, or a recovery action.
No diagnosis. No architecture plan. No list of failed machines or affected services. Just a direct request to get together and understand what was happening.
The issue has crossed into an outage. The person receiving the note has context I need. A conversation today is the next move.
“Let me know when you can chat.”
The conversation is the next step. That is where things stand.