Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on Alma CN01.

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 CN01

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Alma CN01 instance at the Chinese Data Center during the following dates and hours, Beijing time: 

July 2025:

July 15, 2025 from 06:06 PM until 07:18 PM: 72 minutes

July 15, 2025 from 07:30 PM until 08:24 PM: 54 minutes

August 2025:

August 5, 2025 from 03:05 PM until 03:54 PM: 49 minutes

August 5, 2025 from 06:35 PM until 07:00 PM: 25 minutes

August 5, 2025 from 07:43 PM until 08:18 PM: 35 minutes

During the event, Services at the Data center were unavailable.

Root Cause Analysis

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

We've experienced intermittent network disruptions since June 2025 due to a recurring software issue affecting our load balancers. Each time this occurs, our network engineering team implements a mitigation strategy by temporarily shifting traffic between systems to allow for automatic recovery. Service is typically restored quickly with minimal impact. 

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Implemented scheduled weekly reboots of our load balancers to prevent any memory leaks that could affect performance.

• Planning a software upgrade that we believe will resolve this persistent issue

• Evaluating potential hardware upgrades to enhance the overall stability and reliability of our system.

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