Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on June/03/2017

The goal of this document is to share our findings regarding the event, specify the root cause analysis, outline actions to be taken to solve the downtime event, as well as preventive measures Ex Libris is taking to avoid similar cases in future.

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Alma AP01 instance at the APAC Data Center during the following hours:

June 03, 2017 from 02:03 PM until 03:44 PM Singapore time.

During the event, the service was unavailable at times for the environment.

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris Engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause analysis with the following results:

Due to a human error related to the change management process, the June release was installed on the environment a few hours earlier than usual and caused an outage at an unexpected time.

It was found that the verification process that normally stops an installation from being performed in an unapproved window of time contained an error and therefore did not prevent the installation.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

Ex Libris has taken the following action and preventive measures to avoid such an occurrence in future:

• Fixed the error in the verification process
• Added another verification process for double-checking during unapproved hours

Customer Communication 

ExLibris is committed to providing customers with prompt and ongoing updates during Cloud events. Ongoing and prompt updates on service interruptions appear in the system status portal at this address: http://status.exlibrisgroup.com/

These updates are automatically sent as emails to registered customers.

Publication History