EU03 - RCA - November 6, 2023
Introduction
This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the 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.
Effected Products
Alma, Primo VE, Leganto, Esploro, Rialto, Rapido
Event Timeline
Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Higher-Ed Platform EU03 instance at the Frankfurt Data Center between Nov 6, 2023, from 11:22 until 11:47 Frankfurt time.
During this time frame the service was either slow or unresponsive.
Root Cause Analysis
Ex Libris Engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause analysis with the following results:
On Sunday Nov 5th a standard maintenance activity on the DB finished with failure that was not impacting the service. An activity was scheduled for the following Sunday to fix this failure.
On Monday Nov 6th it became evident that the Sunday activity prevented a successful Analytics Data Refresh. A status page was posted to indicate that.
An activity to resolve the Analytics Data Refresh had an adverse effect and cause this disruption. Once this was realized the activity was aborted. It was carried out in a different way on Monday Nov 6 20:00.
Analytics Data Refresh was successfully resumed as of Tue Nov 7th.
Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures
Ex Libris has taken the following action and preventive measures to avoid such an occurrence in future:
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The procedure for the standard maintenance activity that was carried out on Sunday Nov 5 was changed. In case of failure escalation will be done immediately to DBA to check if there is any potential problem before rescheduling for the following Sunday.
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.