SQLite Queue Lost Overnight as Free Server's Ephemeral Storage Wiped Job Data
A developer deployed a background job worker on a free cloud server, using an AI-generated SQLite-based queue to process a batch of jobs submitted at 9 PM. When the platform recycled the instance overnight, it erased the local jobs.db file along with all pending jobs, since the server ran on ephemeral storage. The worker process itself never crashed, and the health endpoint continued returning a 200 OK response, masking the data loss entirely until the next morning. Debugging revealed that the health check only confirmed the Python process was alive, not that the underlying database was intact or accessible. The issue was resolved by migrating the job queue from local SQLite to a managed Postgres database, ensuring state persisted independently of the server instance.
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