Investigating Oracle Usability Alarms and Connection Failures Due to ORA-01033 in Foglight (4379747)

Foglight monitoring agents may report usability or connection availability alarms for Oracle databases, either standby or primary, with errors such as:

ORA-01033: ORACLE initialization or shutdown in progress

As well, these error messages may appear in the database agent log files for the DBO_Usability and DBO_Instance_General collections.

This error may appear across multiple databases, often during maintenance windows, Data Guard operations, or cluster-level events. Affected agents log failed connection attempts, commonly flagged as alarms like "DBO - Usability Availability Single" or "DBO - Usability Connection Availability". Sometimes, these alarms resolve on their own within minutes, with no FglAM host resource issues present. 

`ORA-01033` is returned when an Oracle database is not fully OPEN, either during startup, shutdown, or transitional states (e.g., MOUNT mode). Foglight agents attempt regular monitoring connections, which are refused unless the DB is open and accepting sessions.

Common causes:

• Startup or shutdown: Database is being started or shut down.
• Mount or transition: (Frequent in standby databases) DB may be in MOUNT mode awaiting Data Guard log apply, switchover, or maintenance.
• Data Guard activity (standby): Recovery, log application, or role changes make the DB temporarily unavailable.
• Failover, cluster, storage/virtualization events: External infrastructure actions might interrupt DB availability.
• Primary database recovery or crash Any DB, not just standby, may enter transitional states during recovery.

Foglight does not cause this error, it simply reports the actual connection result as returned by Oracle.

No Foglight defect or misconfiguration was found; the agents reported the actual state of the databases during connection attempts.

Steps for Troubleshooting

1. Confirm Database Status

• Ask the DBA to run:
  SELECT status, open_mode FROM v$instance, v$database;
• Status should be `OPEN`; if not, review why (e.g., `MOUNTED`, `STARTED`, transitional).

2. Review Operations and Logs

• For standby DBs: Check Data Guard log apply, switchover, or failover history.
• For any DB: Review Oracle `alertlog`, cluster logs, and infrastructure activity during the time alarms were fired.

3. Monitor FglAM Server and Agent Behavior

• Use Foglight Host agent to monitor FglAM host resources during incident window.
• Note: Foglight agents will retry connections automatically; alarms should clear when DB becomes OPEN.

4. Network and Infrastructure Check (Advanced)

• Verify that network devices (firewalls, load balancers) did not block listener traffic or interrupt sessions.

5. Agent Tuning and Alert Control

• If alarms fire excessively on standby DBs due to normal transitions, review and adjust alarm thresholds or conditions in Foglight.
• Optionally enable agent debug logging for deeper diagnostics.

6. No Agent/Foglight Defect

• Agents are reporting the state delivered by Oracle. 

Tips

• This applies to all Oracle databases monitored with Foglight, standby DBs experience transitions more frequently, but primaries or RAC nodes may also.
• Maintenance, disaster recovery exercises, or failover often trigger these errors on multiple DBs simultaneously.
• For managed cloud environments (Oracle RDS), check cloud console status and automation logs.