Operating cloud infrastructure efficiently is crucial due to the direct cost implications of processing time, as highlighted by an incident involving ksqlDB on Confluent Cloud. A node relocation led to a failure in query processing, revealing complexities in how ksqlDB manages state stores and schemas. The issue arose from a bug in Kafka Streams' optimization, which mistakenly used a changelog topic name instead of the source topic name during serialization, resulting in schema ID mismatches that prevented proper data recovery. The solution involved registering the correct schema under the appropriate subject to enable successful deserialization. Moving forward, ksqlDB plans to improve its integration with Confluent Schema Registry to enhance schema management flexibility and prevent similar incidents.