RefWorks - RCA - February 14, 2020
Introduction
This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis of the RrefWorks service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on February 14th, 2020.
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 and writing tools exhibited data inaccessibility issues. This was experienced by all Ex Libris customers served by Refworks during the following hours:
February 14th, 2020 from 09:19 AM until February 14th, 2020 09:41 AM US Pacific time.
During the event, the following services had data issues:
· RefWorks (new)
· Write-N-Cite
· RefWorks Citation Manager
· RefWorks for Google Docs
Root Cause Analysis
Ex Libris Engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause analysis with the following results:
There was a failure in one of the API machines that required manual restart of the servers.
Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures
Ex Libris has taken the following action and preventive measures to avoid such an occurrence in future:
- Fix the bug that caused the failure and update the code to avoid the failure from recurring.
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
Date | Publication History |
---|---|
19/02/2020 | Initial Publication |