HEP AP02 - RCA - March 17, 2024

Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on HEP AP02.

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.

Effected Products 

HEP AP02

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Higher-Ed Platform AP02 instance at the Sydney Data Center on March 17, 2024 at the following time frame:

From 09:48 until 10:42 Sydney time.

During these time frames there was a service disruption.

Root Cause Analysis

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

A connection issue arose between Network devices, prompting a failover process.

Our engineers initiated a failback to Side A, deploying a configuration automatically to prevent down time.

However, due to a local configuration on one of the network devices, the deployment failed, leading to a system down.

Our engineers manually rectified this issue, restoring the system to its normal operation.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

A thorough review of network failover procedures and configurations was conducted.

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.