Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Aleph Direct for IDS Lucerne
First
experience
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IGELU Berlin
september 8, 2013
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
• Aleph-Installation hosted by Exlibris
• System-Level maintenance by Exlibris
(Backup, Oracle etc.)
• Application-Level (Aleph-SystemAdministration) by the customer
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Aleph Direct
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
First Experience:
The short version
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• It works very well
(better than expected ;-)
• Communication good
(but could sometimes have been a
little bit clearer/faster)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
And now some details
Who are we?
Where did we start ?
Why ‚Aleph Direct‘ ?
Chronology
Daily business questions/aspects
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Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
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ZHB: Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek:
(Central and University Library of Lucerne)
(Main library the local library network IDS Lucerne)
IDS Luzern:
Information Network of German Speaking Switzerland,
local network Lucerne (25 libraries, university, university
of applied sciences, university of teacher education,
special libraries)
Part of the national ‘IDS’
(Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz)
Staff IDS Lucerne : ca. 150 people
1.2 Million Bib, 1.6 Million Items
Circulation: 500’000 p year
Aleph since 1999
Licenses: 58 staff / 45 WWW
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ZHB Luzern / IDS Lucerne
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
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IDS - Information Network of German
Speaking Switzerland
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
• Aleph since 1999
• Aleph server locally installed 1998-2013
(Sun / Solaris)
Sun E450: 1998-2005 (Aleph V11 – V14)
Sun Fire V440: 2005-2013 (Aleph V16 – V20)
• System-Knowhow not too big; external support for
Oracle-Issues, Backup-Architecture a.s.o.
• Very stable, almost never problems on system level,
but system becoming slow
• We were planning to install new Linux-Server for 2013
(V21)
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ZHB Luzern / IDS Lucerne
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Other Ex Libris products
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• SFX (common installation in IDS)
• Metalib (common installation in IDS, ended in
2013)
• Metalib+ for IDS Lucerne
= Primo Central Hosted installation since 2012
(first steps with Primo)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Offers Ex Libris 2012
• Being interested in
a) Discovery-Tool and
b) Solution for Aleph-Hosting 2013ff
we decided to go for this package (Aleph Direct +
Primo Direct)
• In the future, we probably all will have cloud
computing  why not start already?
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• Offer for Primo hosted
• Offer for Aleph hosted (‘Aleph Direct’)
(better price than earlier offers...)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
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Ex Libris Services (contract)
2.1. Aleph Direct
Aleph Direct is an application hosting package. The application is hosted on hardware owned by Ex Libris at a central data center. Ex Libris maintains ownership and
responsibility for the ongoing maintenance of the application, including installation of software updates and upgrades.
The User is responsible for maintaining the connectivity (with acceptable bandwidth) of the workstations and end users to the main Internet, including network connectivity to
the application, and connectivity between the application and the User’s local applications interacting with the application, as well as creating and maintaining firewall definitions
and opening required ports that permit access to the application.
(b) Hosting ongoing services provided by Ex Libris include:
1. Disk backups to tape
2. Offsite storage of backup tapes
3. Server monitoring
4. Hardware system upgrades, patches, and maintenance
5. Operating system upgrades, patches, and maintenance
6. System security
7. Application availability
(c) Aleph Direct ongoing services provided by Ex Libris include:
1. Ongoing service pack implementation.
2. Ongoing version upgrades.
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(a) Hosting implementation services provided by Ex Libris include:
1. Production hardware platform
2. Hardware maintenance
3. 24 x 7 professional operators
4. Centralized backup facilities
5. Redundant environmental systems (power, cooling, and humidity)
6. Robust UPS facilities
7. Diesel power generators (independent power plant)
8. No fewer than 3 ISPs providing OC3-level bandwidth to the facility with load balancing
9. Redundant routers
10. Backup tapes are stored at the data center, with separate offsite long-term retention.
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
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Ex Libris Services (contract)
EXHIBIT D : HOSTED ENVIRONMENT SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT
1.
Availability
For the duration of the Agreement, Ex Libris will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that the Programs are available for access
and use in accordance with the Agreement (the "Service") at an annual Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.5%, as measured
over any calendar year. Upon request, Ex Libris shall provide the User with a report of any Downtime during a calendar quarter (the
"Quarterly Report").
3. SLA Exclusions
4. Low Uptime Percentage
5. Support Incidents
6. 24x7 Monitoring
The Ex Libris hub team provides 24x7 coverage for the Service by monitoring and alerting on any issues or problems with:
- servers
- operating systems
- network devices (switches/routers)
- backup systems
- server side performance
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2. Definitions
"Scheduled Downtime" means any shutdown of the Service for repairs and/or maintenance including installing any updates, new releases
and upgrades during a Measured Period. Ex Libris will use its reasonable efforts to provide the User with at least seven (7) days notice in
advance of any Scheduled Downtime. Ex Libris will use commercially reasonable efforts to (i) ensure that the Scheduled Downtime falls
between the hours of Saturday 20:00 and Sunday 06:00 CET; and (ii) minimize Scheduled Downtime.
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Chronology
November 2012: Idea ‘Aleph Hosting’
December 2012ff: Offer Ex Libris, negociations
March 2013: Contract
April 2013: Planning
Mai 2013, Week 21/22: Installation Server (EXL)
June 2013, Week 23/24: Upgrade Express (EXL –
Lucerne)
• June 2013, Week 25/26: User Tests on V21 (Lucerne)
• July 2013, Week 27/28: Service Pack, Last Details
(Lucerne)
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Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
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Chronology ff
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• 14./15. July 2013: Switch to production
• August 2013: Installation Testserver (=copy of
production)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
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3 steps
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a) Version 20 to Version 21
b) Solaris to Linux
c) Local installation to external installation
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
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Issues for us (I)
• Our restrictions:
Server can be
abroad, but it must
be Europe; certainly
not US.
• Ex Libris works with
www.equinix.de
(Computer/Data
center worldwide,
our installation in
Amsterdam) ok
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• Where is our server?
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Issues for us (II)
• circulation
performance
 Till now we are
happy with
performance and
connection!
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(distance to server
900 km
instead of 20m or 1
km)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
• Cooperation too complicated?
 it works well (daily work like in the past)
• For example: GUI-Access only open for registered
IP-Adresses?
 GUI-Access no restrictions
(just restrictions you want to handle in
server_ip_allowed)
 Restrictions only for SSH/SFTP (just
registered IP-Adresses), which is reasonable
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Issues for us (III)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
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Issues for us (IV)
• Loss of autonomy (some local programs/interfaces
not allowed/not possible??)
(we do not have a lot of local specialities)
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 Until now, everything works fine, e.g.
- Dirlist (Pearl)
(Tool for web based access to
parameter tables)
- SAP-Interface (PL SQL)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Issues for us (V)
• Access rights?
Standard Aleph-User (aleph/oracle/sql) + sudorights where needed
•  Until now, we are ok with sudo rights – when
we need more, we can talk to Exlibris
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aleph@dc03kg0257eu(a21_1) ILU01> sudo –l
Matching Defaults entries for aleph on this host:
!lecture, tty_tickets, !fqdn
User aleph may run the following commands on this host:
(root) NOPASSWD: /exlibris/aleph/u21_1/alephe/apache/bin/
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Issues for us (VI)
• Exlibris to be stingy with Disk-Space?
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aleph@dc03kg0257eu(a21_1) ILU50> df –h
Filesystem Size
Used Avail Use% Mounted on
(fs1)
28G 6.3G
20G 24% /
(fs2)
3.9G 1.5G 2.5G 37% /dev/shm/dev/vda1
(fs3)
194M
53M 131M 29% /boot
(fs4)
310G 210G 101G 68% /exlibris
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 Until now no problems, enough space for
temporary needs
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Issues for us (VII)
• Can we work on the SQL-Level as we did the last 14 years?
(f.ex. Global updates in Z30)
Lucerne:
But we are used to update data on sql-level!
Ex Libris:
You will have same users/access-Rights in the
hosted version as before, so you can work in
the same way.
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Lucerne:
Do we have the same rights to work on sql?
Ex Libris:
Select ok, Update forbidden (for all AlephInstallations: local or hosted)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
People concerned
• Lucerne:
- 1 project manager
- 1 system librarian
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• Exlibris (Germany):
- 1 project manager
- 1 technical consultant
- 1 Implementation Consultant
- ‘cloud team’
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
• Exlibris:
- Initial installation V21
- Installation u-tree
- [Initial export/import Oracle]  by ourselves
- Upgrade-Express (UPX) steps <1000
(parameters)
• Lucerne:
- Adapting parameter tables
- 2 x Export/Import of Oracle and UPX step > 1000
(oracle tables)
- Service Pack 2 weeks prior to STP
- Final Export/Import Oracle + UPX step > 1000
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who did what
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
• STP planned to be done by ourselves
(out of office hours!)
Saturday 13.7.13 17:00 to
Sunday 14.7.13 17:00
• Starting with unexpected problem:
imprudent killing a first launch of the Oracle-Exportscript (it was not launched in the background) caused
an Oracle Error and blocked the export
 needed Exlibris support 7x24hub in Israel
Support was very very good, problem solved in the
early morning
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Special problems
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Communication during project
• One explanation/reason: vacation period (june/july)
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• In general good and uncomplicate
• But could sometimes be improved:
- communication of some important
parameters/informations took a long time
- Some technical questions needed (too)
many mails
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Backup
• Exlibris offers 7x24 service (no down time for
Backup)
• We decided to have a shutdown/restart once a
week
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crontab aleph-user:
05 01 * * 0 /exlibris/aleph/u21_1/alephe/aleph_shutdown
18 01 * * 0 /exlibris/aleph/u21_1/alephe/aleph_startup
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Monitoring
There are app level checks:
1.
Search in the Aleph
2.
Oracle health checks
3.
J-Boss (For interoperability with Primo)
Only after 30
Minutes!
(which is for us
reasonable and
ok)
(SI 16384453012)
In general, the checks are done every minute and create a critical alert if there is a
sequence of 3 failed checks. But this can change, according to the level of false alerts
we get and load on the monitoring system.
If the customer wants to take down its Aleph, they need to let us know in advance so
that we shut down the monitoring. Otherwise we will think that they are down and will
try to restart their Aleph, which can ruin any work they are doing
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There are server level checks, that are not related to the product:
1.
Disk space
2.
CPU
3.
Load
4.
Ping
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Mon, 6 May 2013
Hello All –
IGELU-ELUNA-HOSTED-L is an unmoderated discussion list
for users of Ex Libris’ Cloud Services. It is a way for users to
share alerts and information specifically about that service, such
as questions about connectivity or response problems. It’s an
extremely low-traffic list. The only messages are generally the
rare “Our catalog (or any other product) seems to be off line, is
anyone else having that issue” posting. Discussions of specific
Ex Libris products should be posted to the appropriate lists,
such as Voyager-L or Aleph500-Discuss-L.
http://el-una.org/mailing-lists/all-products-mailing-lists/#elunahosted
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List IGELU-ELUNA-HOSTED-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern
www.zhbluzern.ch
homepage
Thank you
Further informations
september 8, 2013
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Philipp Marti
Head IT ZHB Luzern
philipp.marti@zhbluzern.ch