On August 18, 2025, at 19:18 UTC, the release of a faulty component in Neo4j Aura impacted the ability to perform backups of customer instances. The problem was identified when a critical component was updated without aligning with another dependent component, leading to failed backup attempts. This resulted in Neo4j not being able to take backups of customer instances for a period of approximately 17 hours. Our team quickly identified the root cause and began mitigation efforts early on August 19, 2025. By 11:54 UTC, the issue was fully resolved, and normal backup operations resumed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and are taking steps to prevent similar issues in the future.
The issue arose because the deployment of the neo4j-backup system was not properly synchronized with the deployment of the neo4j-operator. This misalignment led to critical changes being introduced that impacted the ability to create new backups effectively. Essentially, the two components were not updated in harmony, which caused disruptions in the backup process.
Customers were unable to get successful backups of their instances for 17 hours. We promptly addressed the issue by reverting the recent backup changes that caused disruptions and ensured the stability of our service by cleaning up old, failing backups.
Neo4j remains committed to providing reliable service and is implementing additional safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future.
New mitigations being deployed: