Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on  March 14, 19, 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

Intermediate service interruptions were experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Alma EU02 instance at our European Data Center during the following time period:

March 14th, 2018 from 2:15 PM until 2:49 PM Amsterdam time.
During the event, the service was unavailable for the environment.

March 19th, 2018 from 11:09 AM until 12:21 PM Amsterdam time.
During the event, the service was available but slow for the environment
 

Root Cause Analysis

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

A specific consortial cross partition query was found to be using a wrong DB plan, which gradually caused a ‘pile up’ in the DB, resulting in a significant slowness. 

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• The query was fixed and applied on 20/3/2018.

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