Honeycomb Incident Report: Kafka Maintenance on May 4 and 7, 2026

Honeycomb recently conducted a rare, scheduled maintenance to upgrade its Kafka cluster infrastructure, resulting in temporary service disruptions in the EU and US regions. This maintenance, which was the first of its kind in five years, aimed to replace aging infrastructure to improve scalability and reliability. During the process, data ingestion continued, but queries and dashboards experienced gaps, causing unexpected customer impact due to insufficient communication and preparation. The company acknowledged the shortcomings in customer notification and impact description, as well as challenges in scheduling and coordinating the maintenance. To address these issues, Honeycomb is implementing new protocols for better communication, extended timelines for internal coordination, and clearer accountability, despite not anticipating similar maintenance in the near future. This experience highlighted the need for robust processes and communication strategies to better manage potential disruptions and maintain customer trust.

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