Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on December 12, 2015.

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 EU01 instance at the Europe Data Center during the following hours: 

December 12, 2015 from 12:39PM until 12:51PM Amsterdam timezone].

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 human error took place. During an activity that was performed on an isolated server, an incorrect server name was used. This has caused the server to go down.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• The analyst has immediately realized the mistake and restarted the server.
• Work procedures are being updated to verify mistakes are prevented as much as possible.

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/