RMAN - Setting proper retention policy

[KenEwald]

I'm doing a nightly full (hot) backup of all databases to disk. When that backup is complete, the backup pieces are copied out to tape.

Before the next backup, and only after successful archival to tape, I remove the backup pieces from the previous day.

I only have last nights backup available (on disk). Should I set my retention policy to "WINDOW of 1 DAYS"?

Will I have a problem if I need to recover from 2 weeks ago? I do have the backup pieces .. the catalog just won't know about them, right?

[Axr2]

Originally posted by KenEwald

I only have last nights backup available (on disk). Should I set my retention policy to "WINDOW of 1 DAYS"?

Will I have a problem if I need to recover from 2 weeks ago? I do have the backup pieces .. the catalog just won't know about them, right?

Para 2 : Not really. This just tells RMAN what's "obsolete" and what's not. If you set it to 1 day, it'll merely "mark" your old backups as obsolete. The backup piece is still there in your controlfile/catalog. It is left to you as to what you want to do with it. You may wish to keep it or delete it..that's your call.

Para 1 : Why would you want to do that? Set it to something appropriate.

[KenEwald]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I understand the retention parameter much better now.

I'll just set the retention to 365 days and yearly delete the "obsolete" backup's .. even though all but yesterday's files are archived to a tape.