Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for thePrimo service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on September 29, 2016

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.

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Primo MT APAC01 instance at the APAC Data Center during the following hours: 

September 29,2016 from 12:44PM until 1:18PM Singapore time zone

During the event, the service was unavailable for the environment.

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris Engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause analysis with the following results:

The service interruption was a result of an application defect that is causing a significant impact on the search engines and get them to a state in which they are not able to function, they consume all the available hardware and become unavailable.

This defect is becoming evident when there is a significant load one the system, with conjunction to the hotswap.

We have also identified that a system configuration is preventing us from restoring the service quickly once a situation as the above occurs.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• We have implemented an emergency procedure that would allow us to mitigate the existing problem and reduce the recovery time
• We have moved to mid-day hotswap to a later hour in the day.
• We are adding several code corrections in the next release – that will reduce the search engine impact and will correct the configuration setting in a way that will enable a quicker recovery

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/