Surviving the SSHpocolypse

GitHub recently faced issues with its SSH infrastructure, leading to intermittent connection failures for a small number of Git SSH operations, affecting both users and GitHub's internal operations. To address this, the team implemented architectural changes by retiring old SSH patches and developing a new system that uses a shared library plugin within their Rails app, which communicates with an HTTP endpoint to verify authorized public keys. This approach reduces the number of direct database connections by leveraging a web server with persistent connections, thereby enhancing scalability and reliability. After deploying these changes, GitHub observed a significant decrease in database connections and an improvement in SSH server performance, although they continue to explore further scalability improvements. Users are encouraged to report any ongoing issues to GitHub's support team.

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