Use the Archive Log Destination Space alert in Mini DBA to monitor Oracle instances and make this condition visible before it becomes a wider database incident.
Mini DBA describes this alert as: Archive log destination running out of space If archive destination fills, the database will hang until space is freed Critical alert - requires immediate attention The default evaluation frequency is Minute, so the alert is intended to be close enough to operational reality for live triage. Because duration is used, Mini DBA can avoid treating a single short spike as a full incident when the condition clears quickly.
This alert protects storage and recovery capacity. It helps you find growth, retention, and backup conditions that can stop writes, break recovery objectives, or leave the server without enough working space for normal database activity.
Enable it on systems with recovery objectives and on any database where a missed backup or archive problem would require business escalation. Test and lab systems can use looser settings if they are recreated from source control or seed data.
Threshold meaning: % full. Major threshold: 90 %. Minor threshold: 85 %. Comparison direction: "over". Duration is used, so prefer requiring the condition to persist before paging people for transient spikes. Use higher thresholds on batch-heavy, development, or intentionally bursty systems where brief pressure is expected. Use lower thresholds on latency-sensitive production systems, small instances with little headroom, and services with strict recovery or availability commitments.
Free space by removing safe-to-delete files, expanding the volume or tablespace, moving growth-heavy objects, correcting retention settings, or shrinking only after a documented one-off event. For recovery-related areas, verify that backups and log shipping or archiving are healthy before deleting anything.
If this alert is noisy, check whether the workload naturally has short bursts. Raise the duration or threshold for expected batch windows, but keep a lower route for production systems where user-facing latency matters. Avoid simply disabling the alert until you know whether the noise is caused by threshold choice or by a real capacity trend.