Primo VE EU03 - RCA – March 6 and March 8, 2024
Introduction
This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on Higher-Ed Platform EU03.
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
Primo VE
Event Timeline
Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Higher-Ed Platform EU03 instance at the Frankfurt Data Center on:
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Mar 6, 2024, from 19:39 until 19:59
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Mar 8, 2024, from 00:06 until 00:45 Frankfurt time.
During this time frame the service was unavailable for Primo VE.
Root Cause Analysis
On 19:39, Mar 6, 2024, a search node was non-responsive and had to be shut down from the host. Since the node was “stuck” and not down, the failover mechanism failed and resulted in downtime.
Our engineers started to analyze the issue with no findings and the same happened on 00:06, Mar 8, 2024. At this time our engineers examined the problem in real time and found out that there was a license file misconfiguration for a specific software component.
The node was again shut down from the host but this time the license file misconfiguration was permanently fixed.
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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License file misconfiguration should not have affected the search node in any way; however, it caused an unanticipated memory leak.We contacted the vendor and were reassured that a fix would be provided within 2 weeks.
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Due to the need for extensive testing, this fix will be deployed in the July release. Meanwhile, all activities around license updates for this specific software component are suspended.
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.