rman question

[pascal01]

We have a new database that was never backed up before. The database is in archivelog in ASM.
We shutdown the application and want to take a full backup. There are serveral archivelogs that was never backed up. Should I just take a full rman backup and forget about the archivelogs ? If so, how do I get rid of the archivelogs after the full backup ? Thanks.

[LKBrwn_DBA]

... Should I just take a full rman backup and forget about the archivelogs ? If so, how do I get rid of the archivelogs after the full backup ?

Yes, take full backup of database and archivelogs, something like this:

RUN
{
  ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch1 DEVICE TYPE DISK;
  ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch2 DEVICE TYPE DISK;
  ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch3 DEVICE TYPE DISK;
  ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch4 DEVICE TYPE DISK;
  BACKUP AS COMPRESSED BACKUPSET
    DATABASE
    FORMAT = 'F:\orabackup\ORCL\%d_%t_%s_%U.bkp'
    INCLUDE CURRENT CONTROLFILE
    PLUS ARCHIVELOG DELETE INPUT;
}

If after this, there still remain old archive logs, you can remove them with these commands:

ALLOCATE CHANNEL FOR MAINTENANCE DEVICE TYPE DISK;
CHANGE ARCHIVELOG ALL CROSSCHECK;
DELETE NOPROMPT EXPIRED BACKUP DEVICE TYPE DISK;
DELETE NOPROMPT OBSOLETE;

[pascal01]

The application has been shutdown and there will be no activity on the database until a backup is taken. I want to avoid a large backup but be able to recove from the full backup. Can I just do a full backup without backing up the archive logs, then do 'delete archivelog all;' ?

[PAVB]

Requirement is getting closer and closer to an old fashioned cold backup - if that's the case, shutdown the database, take a cold backup.

[pascal01]

Yes. The database at this time is used for querries only and cannot shut it down. The database is in ASM.
I suppose a full database (level 0) without archivelogs should be OK ? Then 'delete archivelog all;' ?

[gandolf989]

Requirement is getting closer and closer to an old fashioned cold backup - if that's the case, shutdown the database, take a cold backup.

If the datafiles are stored in ASM, then you need to do either a warm backup or a hot backup. You can do a warm backup without the archive logs, but you need archive logs to roll a backup forward to a future point in time. If you do a hot backup, then you are doing an inconsistent backup and you need the archive logs to make the database consistent when you restore. Either way you want to do a compressed backup with the archive logs. You can truncate the archive logs after you back them up. The commands that lkbrown posted should work for what you need. Although I don't manually allocate channels, I make RMAN do that for me.