Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on July 9th, 2019.
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 NA Data Center during the following hours: 

July 9th, 2019 from 11:55 AM until 01:29 PM CST time

During the event, the environment encountered login issues, no data was impacted. Logged in users were able to continue with their work.

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause of this issue and concluded the following:

A change in the Firewall configuration resulted in blocking of outbound network.
Ex Libris engineers reverted the change to reestablish outbound network traffic. .

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 reverted the change to reestablish outbound network traffic.

• Adding additional monitoring to monitor outgoing traffic

• Ex Libris change management risk level will be re-evaluated to validate the risk of the relevant activity.

• Working process and tools will be enhanced to reduce risk level.

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