Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on September 17, 2018

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: 

• September 17th, 08:11 UTC – 24X7 HUB received an alert reporting service interruption in Alma AP01
• September 17th, 08:16 UTC – System was brought back up
• September 17th, 10:30 UTC – all loaning issues were resolved
• September 18^th, 23:30 UTC – Primo customers reported issues related to requesting actions
• September 18^th, 01:30 UTC – Requesting issues were resolved

Root Cause Analysis

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

An updated script with a mistaken configuration was executed and caused a service disruption.

After an investigation, changes done via the script were rolled back and the service was restored.  During this period batch jobs were put on hold as an additional safety measure.

At a later point in time, the service cache needed to be refreshed in order to correct the reported Primo requesting issues.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• All relevant scripts will be reviewed and a preventive step will be taken
• Procedures will be reviewed to ensure the service cache is refreshed at an earlier stage when recovering the service

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