Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on May 20 and May 26, 2020

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

Intermediate service interruptions were experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Alma AP01 instance at our Singapore Data Center during the following time period:

May 20^th , 2020 from 3:23 PM until 3:39 PM Singapore time

May 26th, 2020 from 1:11 PM until 1:17 PM Singapore time

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

Root Cause Analysis

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

A routine statistics gathering process on one of the DB tables caused an issue with the DB and eventually a service disruption
 

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Ex Libris engineers stopped the statistics gathering during the event. A permanent fix was applied to the environment on 26/5/2020 12:00 UTC. We are closely monitoring the system to make sure the fix is working as expected.

Customer Communication

Ex Libris 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.