Including the backups stored on the same server!

Google Cloud has deleted in error the $135 billion account and data for UniSuper, a retirement fund company that holds the superannuation savings for 647,000 members working at 37 Australian universities. Member funds and accounts were inaccessible for two weeks from May 2 to 15 while Google worked to recover and restore everything.

According to Google Cloud, there was “an inadvertent misconfiguration during provisioning of UniSuper’s Private Cloud services ultimately resulted in the deletion of UniSuper’s Private Cloud subscription” across the two geographies where its Private Cloud was duplicated on. Hundreds of UniSuper applications, databases, and virtual machines in Google Cloud were wiped, forcing UniSuper to fall back on an additional backup held at another service provider. All data, accounts, and money were unavailable for two weeks until the full restoration was confirmed by UniSuper on the 15th.

A joint UniSuper and Google Cloud statement noted that “Google Cloud has identified the events that led to this disruption and taken measures to ensure this does not happen again.", however, exactly what caused the deletion remains a conjecture.

We no longer have any clients on Google Cloud although it remains an option. Also, our backups are stored in at least two diverse locations. Not saying 'it couldn't happen here' but it's unlikely.

May 2nd 2024 was a Thursday so maybe don't make any significant config changes so close to a weekend.

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