Alma NA02 - RCA – January 1 & 2, 2019

Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers.

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 NA02 instance at the North America Data Center during the following hours: 

January 1^st, 2019 from 2:33 AM until 3:22 AM CST time

January 2^nd, 2019 from 2:34 AM until 3:18 AM CST time

 During the events, 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:

An extreme load situation at the database layer caused the database server to reach its memory limitation which caused an unexpected database crash and required full system start up to bring the system back to full functionality.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Ex Libris engineers restarted the system to bring the environment to full functionality
• Ex Libris engineers added memory to the database server on January 2nd and will continue close monitoring of the environment.

Customer Communication

Ex Libris 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