Overview of Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern's Aleph Direct Experience
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern, also known as ZHB Luzern, has shared their first experience with using Aleph Direct for IDS Lucerne at the IGELU Berlin event in September 2013. The library's website provides insights into their Aleph installation hosted by Exlibris, including system-level maintenance and application-level administration. The short version of their experience indicates that Aleph Direct works very well, with effective communication despite occasional clarity and speed improvements. The library is a key part of the Information Network of German Speaking Switzerland and houses a vast collection with significant circulation. Learn more about their journey, staff, licenses, and infrastructure through their detailed presentation slides.
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Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Aleph Direct for IDS Lucerne First experience IGELU Berlin september 8, 2013 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Aleph Direct Aleph-Installation hosted by Exlibris System-Level maintenance by Exlibris (Backup, Oracle etc.) Application-Level (Aleph-System- Administration) by the customer folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage First Experience: The short version It works very well (better than expected ;-) Communication good (but could sometimes have been a little bit clearer/faster) http://static.freepik.com/fotos-kostenlos/ok-symbol_17-1009133509.jpg folie
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 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage ZHB Luzern / IDS Lucerne http://www.informationsverbund.ch/typo3temp/pics/ae4f274972.gif 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 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage IDS - Information Network of German Speaking Switzerland http://www.informationsverbund.ch/typo3temp/pics/ae4f274972.gif folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage ZHB Luzern / IDS Lucerne 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) folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Other Ex Libris products 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) folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Offers Ex Libris 2012 Offer for Primo hosted Offer for Aleph hosted ( Aleph Direct ) (better price than earlier offers...) 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? folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage 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. (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. (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 folie (c) Aleph Direct ongoing services provided by Ex Libris include: 1. Ongoing service pack implementation. 2. Ongoing version upgrades.
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Ex Libris Services (contract) EXHIBIT D : HOSTED ENVIRONMENT SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT 1. 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"). Availability 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. 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 folie
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) folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Chronology ff 14./15. July 2013: Switch to production August 2013: Installation Testserver (=copy of production) folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage 3 steps a) Version 20 to Version 21 b) Solaris to Linux c) Local installation to external installation folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (I) Where is our server? 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 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (II) circulation performance http://www.animaatjes.de/bilder/a/amsterdam/animaatjes-amsterdam-40086.jpg (distance to server 900 km instead of 20m or 1 km) http://pics.ricardostatic.ch/2_661559180_Big/ansichtskarten-schweiz/ak-luzern-wasserturm-pilatus-1972.jpg Till now we are happy with performance and connection! folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (III) 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 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (IV) Loss of autonomy (some local programs/interfaces not allowed/not possible??) Until now, everything works fine, e.g. - Dirlist (Pearl) (Tool for web based access to parameter tables) - SAP-Interface (PL SQL) folie (we do not have a lot of local specialities)
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (V) Access rights? Standard Aleph-User (aleph/oracle/sql) + sudo- rights where needed 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/ folie Until now, we are ok with sudo rights when we need more, we can talk to Exlibris
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Issues for us (VI) Exlibris to be stingy with Disk-Space? Until now no problems, enough space for temporary needs 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 folie
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: Do we have the same rights to work on sql? Ex Libris: Select ok, Update forbidden (for all Aleph- Installations: local or hosted) 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. folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage People concerned Exlibris (Germany): - 1 project manager - 1 technical consultant - 1 Implementation Consultant - cloud team Lucerne: - 1 project manager - 1 system librarian folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage who did what 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 folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Special problems 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-Export- script (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 OK folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Communication during project 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 One explanation/reason: vacation period (june/july) folie
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 crontab aleph-user: 05 01 * * 0 /exlibris/aleph/u21_1/alephe/aleph_shutdown 18 01 * * 0 /exlibris/aleph/u21_1/alephe/aleph_startup folie
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Monitoring Only after 30 Minutes! (which is for us reasonable and ok) (SI 16384- 453012) There are server level checks, that are not related to the product: 1. Disk space 2. CPU 3. Load 4. Ping There are app level checks: 1. Search in the Aleph 2. Oracle health checks 3. J-Boss (For interoperability with Primo) 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. folie 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
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage List IGELU-ELUNA-HOSTED-L@LISTSERV.ND.EDU 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. folie http://el-una.org/mailing-lists/all-products-mailing-lists/#elunahosted
Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek Luzern www.zhbluzern.ch homepage Thank you Further informations Philipp Marti Head IT ZHB Luzern philipp.marti@zhbluzern.ch september 8, 2013 folie
