Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the CampusM service interruption experienced by few Ex Libris customers on August 22, 2021.
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 event, as well as preventive measures Ex Libris is taking to avoid similar cases in future.

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by few Ex Libris customers served by the CampusM instance in the Chicago Data Center during the following hours: 

August 22, 2021 from 14:15 until 22:16 CDT time

During the event, some of the customers encountered service disruption .

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause of this issue and concluded the following:

As part of an upgrade to the campusM CMAuth authentication module, an issue was found that was impacting only customers using CMAuth authentication process with neither "NameId" nor the "SessionIndex" parameter as part of the AuthenticationResponse in their SAML IdP configuration.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

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

The AuthenticationRespons is now gracefully handling all aspects of these 2 parameters, including when neither are provided.

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.