Monday, June 30, 2008

When your archive log destination is full

Have you experienced a sudden transaction blast, which fills your archive log destinations within minutes? Do you remember what your first reaction is? I'll try to help you:
a) Erase the archive logs and later crosscheck them
b) Move previous archive logs to free-up some space
c) Close your application and trigger an archive log backup

But, and this is an awareness-but: What if you're using Flashback recovery? What if this archive activity is the result of a very important process? think, that you may be in risk of losing a vital period of activity.

Well, you don't have to worry anymore: the archive log destinations provide the flexibility of dynamic change, therefore you may issue an ALTER SYSTEM and redirect the output generated by the archive writer process to another directory. The statement is really simple:
SQL> ALTER SYSTEM SET LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST='your new filesystem' SCOPE=MEMORY;

The best part of all, you don't have to worry about operations on new archive log generated files or previous ones: the database keeps track of every file, saving the full path at the time of writing, therefore recovery and backup operations will have the right information to proceed successfully. You only have to worry about space availability.

I hope this post help you, please leave your comments and suggestions.


Undo Problems?: please read Who is using your UNDO space? Improved Script"
 
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