Incident Documentation Report
Incident Summary

Incident ID: INC-20241012-001
Incident Type: Server Crash
Severity: Critical
Status: Resolved
Affected System: SRV-FINANCE01 (Finance Department Server)
Incident Date: 2024-10-12 09:00 AM
Resolution Date: 2024-10-12 11:30 AM
Total Downtime: 2 hours 30 minutes


Incident Description
Nature of the Incident:
At 09:00 AM on 2024-10-12, SRV-FINANCE01 experienced a critical failure due to CPU overload while processing financial reports for the end-of-day reconciliation. This overload caused the server to crash, disrupting the generation of time-sensitive financial data for the Finance Department.
SRV-FINANCE01 is a mission-critical server responsible for handling the organization’s financial transactions and daily reconciliations. The server crashed due to simultaneous resource-intensive jobs being executed, including complex SQL queries for report generation and database reconciliation tasks.
Symptoms:

High CPU Usage: The CPU load on SRV-FINANCE01 exceeded 100% for over 30 minutes, causing the system to crash.
Sluggish System Performance: Prior to the crash, the system exhibited signs of performance degradation, with slow response times for database queries.
Unresponsive Services: Key financial applications hosted on the server became unresponsive, affecting users in the Finance Department.

Logs:
System logs from 08:45 AM to 09:00 AM showed increased CPU activity related to batch processing jobs:
[2024-10-12 08:45:00] CPU usage at 95%, SQL queries initiated for end-of-day reconciliation. 
[2024-10-12 08:50:00] CPU usage at 98%, multiple database reconciliation jobs running. 
[2024-10-12 08:55:00] CPU usage at 100%, memory allocation nearing threshold. 
[2024-10-12 09:00:00] System crash, services unresponsive, CPU usage at 105%.

Resolution Steps
Immediate Actions Taken:


Workload Redistribution: 

IT staff manually offloaded non-critical batch processing tasks to the backup server, SRV-FINANCE-BKP01, to reduce the load on the primary server.



SQL Query Optimization: 

The database administrator identified inefficient SQL queries contributing to the high CPU usage. These queries were optimized to reduce the load on the server by implementing query caching and batch processing optimizations.



Memory Audit:

A memory usage audit was conducted to determine if memory-related processes were contributing to the overload. No significant memory leaks were found, but optimization was recommended for the future.



Server Reboot and Monitoring:

The server was rebooted at 09:45 AM. After the reboot, continuous monitoring was enabled to track CPU usage and prevent future overloads.



Upgrade of System Resources:

The server’s memory was upgraded from 256GB to 512GB to accommodate future resource demands, particularly during peak financial processing periods.




Root Cause Analysis
Summary of Findings:


The incident was caused by concurrent resource-intensive jobs running on SRV-FINANCE01, including:

End-of-day financial report generation.
Database reconciliation tasks, which involve fetching large datasets and performing complex calculations.



CPU overload occurred because these jobs were not properly scheduled, resulting in multiple high-load tasks running simultaneously. The server was unable to handle the combined workload, leading to a system crash.


Contributing Factors:


Job Scheduling Conflict:

Multiple jobs were initiated without considering resource contention. This caused the server to attempt to process multiple high-priority tasks at the same time, overloading the CPU.



Inefficient SQL Queries:

SQL queries used for data reconciliation were not optimized. They fetched large datasets from the database, further straining the system’s CPU.



Insufficient Resource Allocation:

The server's initial configuration (256GB RAM) was insufficient to handle peak load periods, particularly when running complex jobs during financial reporting periods.




Business Impact


Delayed End-of-Day Financial Reporting: The Finance Department was unable to generate end-of-day financial reports for the CFO’s office on time. The reports were delayed by approximately 2 hours, resulting in minor disruptions in the Finance Department's workflow.


Potential for Regulatory Compliance Issues: 

The delayed reporting could have impacted compliance with regulatory requirements, as some financial reports are time-sensitive. However, due to the quick resolution, no compliance breaches occurred.



Financial Impact: 

While there was no direct financial loss, the delay in reporting could have resulted in late penalties if not addressed promptly. The resolution within 2.5 hours helped avoid any major repercussions.




Recommendations for Future Prevention
1. Implement Job Scheduling Optimization

Introduce automated job scheduling that prioritizes high-load tasks and staggers them to avoid resource contention. Ensure that resource-intensive jobs, such as report generation and database reconciliation, are scheduled during low-traffic periods.

2. Horizontal Scaling

Introduce horizontal scaling to distribute the workload across multiple servers during peak financial periods. This will prevent any single server from being overloaded with concurrent high-demand jobs.

3. Optimize Database Queries

Review and optimize SQL queries used in the reconciliation process. Introduce query caching, indexing, and partitioning to reduce the computational load on the server.

4. Increase System Resource Allocation

Increase memory allocation on SRV-FINANCE01 to handle peak workloads. The server should have at least 512GB of RAM and additional CPU resources to ensure high availability and avoid overload.

5. Implement Continuous Monitoring and Alerts

Use real-time monitoring tools to track CPU usage, memory usage, and job execution times. Set up automated alerts that notify the IT team if any server approaches 90% CPU utilization, allowing for preemptive action.


Post-Incident Follow-Up
Audit and Review:

A post-incident audit will be conducted on 2024-10-14 to review the effectiveness of the resolution steps and ensure no further issues arise from the CPU overload incident.

Action Items:

Conduct a review of all job scheduling and database queries used by the Finance Department.
Report findings to the IT Infrastructure Team.
Schedule a follow-up meeting with the CFO’s office to review the incident's impact on financial reporting.


Key Contacts

Incident Owner: Dwayne Kashpakov (IT Operations Lead)
Database Administrator: Marry Smith (DBA Team)
System Administrator: Robert Saquel (Infrastructure Team)
Finance Department Contact: Sarah Gomez (CFO’s Office)


Report Generated by:

Incident Documentation Generator Agent
Agent Version: v4.0
Date Generated: 2024-10-12