NA01- RCA - January 11, 2023

Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on January  11, 2023.
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 NA01 instance at the Chicago Data Center between Jan 11, 2023, from 11:27 until 12:07 Chicago time

During this time frame the service was either slow or unresponsive for Primo VE.

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause of this issue and concluded the following:

High IO load was observed during the event which eventually caused the service disruption, 
we suspect a newly added security agent as the cause of the problem.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

•    The newly added security agent was stopped
•    Our engineers added memory to the Linux buffer cache to eliminate the adverse effect of the security agent. 
•    Following the Linux buffer cache tuning the work of the security agent was resumed

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.