RefWorks - RCA - October 24, 2019

Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis of the legacy RrefWorks service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on October 24, 2019.

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

The Refworks website was unavailable and experienced by certain Ex Libris customers served by legacy Refworks during the following hours:

October 24th, 2019 from 12:30 PM until 12:44 PM US Pacific time.

During the event, the legacy RefWorks service was unavailable

Root Cause Analysis

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

As part of a standard and non-disruptive activity, database failover was done and took longer than expected, resulting in application disruption.
Ex Libris engineers restarted the database in order to restore functionality

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Ex Libris engineers restarted the database in order to restore functionality.

• The procedure for such activities was changed so they will be done during non-peak hour

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