Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on November 26, 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.

Affected Products 

HEP NA05

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the HEP NA05 instance during the following hours: 

July 19, 2025 at 13:45:00 until 14:25 Seattle time: During the event the service was partially available. 

During the event there was a service disruption.

Root Cause Analysis

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

During a scheduled change, an unintended action led to the temporary disruption of a server unrelated to the original scope.

This occurred due to a visual oversight in the management interface, which displays assets from multiple locations in a unified view.

Once identified, our engineering teams acted swiftly to restore services, collaborating across support channels to ensure minimal impact.

The affected system was successfully brought back online without requiring further manual interventions.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• We implement a visual separation in our management system between the different Datacenters servers to make sure the engineer won't repeat the mistake.

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.