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I dropped our production database and now pay 10% more for AWS

alexeyondata.substack.com

March 6, 2026

16 min read

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45/100

Summary

A Terraform command executed by an AI agent accidentally deleted the production infrastructure for the DataTalks.Club course platform, leading to a 10% increase in AWS costs during the restoration process. Plans include migrating the AI Shipping Labs website from static GitHub Pages to AWS and transitioning from a Next.js setup to a Django version.

Key Takeaways

An AI agent executed a Terraform command that inadvertently wiped out the production infrastructure for the DataTalks.Club course platform, including all data stored for 2.5 years.
The author upgraded to AWS Business Support for faster recovery assistance, which increased costs by 10%.
The database was fully restored within 24 hours, containing over 1.9 million rows in the courses_answer table.
Preventive measures implemented after the incident included setting up a backup Lambda function, enabling deletion protection, and creating S3 backups.

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Coverage & discussions

Hacker News · alexeyondata.substack.com

I dropped our production database and now pay 10% more for AWS ↗

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Community Sentiment

Negative

Positives

The ability to recover deleted snapshots from AWS support is a rare and fortunate occurrence, highlighting the importance of backup strategies in production environments.

Concerns

Relying on AI tools like Claude Code without proper oversight can lead to reckless decisions, as seen when the author approved a 'terraform destroy' command without understanding its implications.
The integration of multiple projects into one workflow, despite warnings from the AI, demonstrates a lack of caution that can lead to significant operational risks.
The incident underscores the critical need for a separate staging environment to prevent catastrophic mistakes in production settings, especially when dealing with valuable data.