Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the RefWorks interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on May 11th, 2018

 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 and identify preventive measures Ex Libris is taking to avoid similar cases in future.

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by RefWorks during the following hours:

May 11^th, 2018 from 8:21 AM until 9:19 AM CST 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:

A combination of large data and  insufficient indexing in the code made the Mongo cluster to use disk space at an abnormal rate.
This lead to a general unavailability of the entire system

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Reboot the mongo cluster
• Improve the monitoring to indicate correct status

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.

Publication History