Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on March 28, 2016

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 NA01 instance at the North America Data Center during the following hours: 

March 28, 2016 from 3:13 PM to 3:33 PM Chicago 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 query monitoring system had a code defect that caused it to loop, the loop had loaded the DB 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:

• The problematic code was identified and already fixed and implemented.

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/