Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Alma service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on November 12, 2022.
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 NA91

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Higher-Ed Platform NA91 instance at the Chicago Data Center between:

September 6, 2024, from 08:55 until 9:15 Chicago time.

During the event, Service was unavailable for the environment.

Root Cause Analysis

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

During a planned non-disruptive activity on the environment, one of the process didn’t completed successfully and required our engineers to re-run it.
The second attempt did not follow the correct procedure and was done during working hours.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• The relevant procedure has been enhanced and fine-tuned to cover similar scenarios.

• Provide training to the Cloud team on the correct utilization of the applicative Process.

• Ensure this type of activity is performed only during off-business hours.

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.