HEP AP01 - RCA - May 17, 2021

Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on Higher-Ed Platform AP01

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 Higher-Ed Platform AP01 instance at the Singapore Data Center between May 17, 2021 from 11:11 until 11:59 Singapore time.
 

During this time frame the service was partially available due to sporadic errors on the effected products

Root Cause Analysis

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

An Oracle Statistics Job which was supposed to run at nighttime was running at daytime due to a scheduling error with regards to offset from UTC. As a result of the heavy daytime traffic this caused online session time outs resulting in errors.

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 disabled the job to avoid another reoccurrence of the problem. 

·         The scheduling error was fixed on May 18 23:00 and the job was enabled again and is now running properly at nighttime.

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.