Re: RMAN delete BEFORE backup

I'm sure you'll have done this already for the client but please impress upon them that enough space on media to *always* have a known good completed backup available is not optional. Suppose (just one failure scenario) that you delete the old backup then start backing up only to have a fatal hardware error corrupting the system datafile. RMAN will error on backup (as the database crashes!) and you will have no way back. There are other failure scenarios as well. Bottom line you need the disk space to store a known good backup and the new backup before you delete the old one.

What can you do to alleviate the problem if the client doesn't want to address the above?

First you could upgrade to 10g or higher (11.2.0.2 would be my current recommendation as anything else is currently a terminal release or desupported to all intents and purposes). This gets you built in backup compression. (and a host of other RMAN improvements, that amongst other things mean you'll likely have smaller "uncompressed" backups as well).

Second this appears to be a windows system. In the event that this is the case and the client likes the idea of running current software even less than the idea of buying disk then you could compress the F:\orabackups directory using NTFS compression which will slow the backup process down somewhat but may well buy you the space you need.

My experience is that every time folks get creative about saving disk space on backup media then sooner or later they find they haven't got the necessary resources to recover from some unexpected event. Disk isn't cheap - despite what the vendors say - lost databases tend to be more expensive though.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Alan Sterger <asterger_at_earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello Listers,
>
> Using Oracle 9i RMAN template below. Level 0 executes on Sunday, Level 1
> the rest of the week.
>
> Client has limited disk space. Can the 'delete input' and/or 'delete
> obsolete' be executed BEFORE the two 'backup' commands?
>
> Are there other tweaks that can be applied? Got a better script?
>
> run {
> allocate channel Channel1 type disk format 'F:\orabackups\%d_%s_%p_%t';
> backup incremental level 1
> ( database include current controlfile );
> backup ( archivelog all delete input );
> }
> allocate channel for maintenance device type disk;
> delete obsolete device type disk;
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan Sterger
> --
> http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
>
>
>

-- 
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info

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