Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the RrefWorks service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on September 27, 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, 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 RefWorks instance at the during the following hours: 

September 27th , 2018 from 12:45 PM until 1:11 PM US Pacific time.

During the event, the following services was intermittently unavailable:

• Refworks

Root Cause Analysis

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

Code was deployed that included a database index creation request. Combined with a data modification script, the database cluster became overwhelmed. Upon killing the index creation process, things returned to normal.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

• Avoid running index creation during report generation process

Customer Communication

Ex Libris 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