Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on January 2nd and 3rd, 2017

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 instances at the Europe Data Center during the following hours: 

January 2, 2017 from 7:05 PM until 7:16 PM Amsterdam time zone

January 3, 2017 from 10:37 AM until 10:42 AM Amsterdam time zone

Event was identified via the 24x7 hub monitoring. 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:

We experienced a simultaneous network device failure on our backbone infrastructure.

As a result of this failure, a failover to the adjacent redundant network device took place.

Due to a network component configuration setup the failover took longer than expected and caused the system disruption.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• To prevent future occurrences, the High Availability network component configuration has been enhanced to allow for faster seamless proper failover in case needed
• Ex Libris engineers are working with Cisco support on RCA for the failed devices

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