Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on November 08, 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 Alma EU00 instance at the Europe Data Center during the following hours:

November 18, 2015 from 04:48 PM until 07:40 PM Central European 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 database backup (snapshot) had been identified to cause a high load on the storage of the environment.

The snapshot had been identified to be broken during a maintenance activity that took place during the maintenance window.  This took place during the replication activity of the snapshot.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Manual check of the replication has been added to the working procedure. The replication will be stopped before each activity to prevent the problem identified with the snapshot.
• The problem that had caused the snapshot to fail had been identified to be a defect in the firmware of a specific hardware unit. The defect correction advised by the third party vendor is being tested by Ex Libris engineers and will be implemented to the environment following the test.

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/