Introducing the GitHub Availability Report

GitHub has introduced a monthly Availability Report to enhance transparency and accountability regarding its service availability, with the aim of sharing insights and learnings from any incidents that occur. The report includes descriptions of incidents, technical explanations, and updates on how GitHub is evolving its engineering systems to maintain high availability and fault tolerance. In May and June, GitHub experienced four incidents, including issues with database table sizes and MySQL server crashes during maintenance, which impacted service availability. These incidents have prompted GitHub to implement improvements like better monitoring, enhanced test frameworks, and internal gameday exercises to prepare for future issues. The organization views each incident as a valuable learning opportunity to improve reliability and operational excellence, with ongoing analyses and adjustments aimed at preventing similar failures in the future.