ORA-1034 Errors in Remote Archival to Standby

It is possible to get ORA-1034 in a standby setup.

You setup remote archival for standby site using :
log_archive_dest_2 = 'SERVICE=<SID> DB_UNIQUE_NAME=<STANDBY INSTANCE UNIQUE NAME>'

This parameter has been defined in parameter file and this is the first time you are trying to setup remote archival to standby destination.

But you notice that the archive log files are not getting shipped to the standby site and the primary alert log shows:

ARC0: Beginning to archive log# 1 seq# 1800
ARC0: Standby archivelog instance not available at host '<SID>'
ARC0: Error 1034 creating archivelog file '<SID>'

- You check the tnsnames.ora file and the alias name is available
- Tnsping to standby database works fine.
- The standby database is mounted properly in standby mode. 
- A query on v$archive_dest will show ORA-1034 for log_archive_dest_2 for the standby destination.


Solution
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Check the SID_LIST section in the listener.ora on primary server.
Check ORACLE_HOME and SID_NAME parameters correctly.


Explanation
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ORA-1034 indicates that the listener is running but [a] the database could not be identified, or [b] standby database not mounted.

But the database is mounted as indicated in the standby site alert.log.

So, check the listener.ora file and correct the SID or ORACLE_HOME. For linux based systems, make sure that the SID is given in proper case (upper or lower case). It should also match the values given.