I’m having some problems with my RMAN backups. Sorry if this is a basic question but I have little experience of RMAN backups.
The RMAN script and backup process was set up by the person who originally installed the DB. It is supposed to do an incremental backup daily at 12:05 am and 12:05 pm and a full backup every three days.
The backups get consistently larger over time, often being much larger than my datafiles. Even with very little done ~100Mb is added each day (see table below).
If a full backup is being run every 3 days then why are the incremental backups being kept and things keep getting larger and larger overtime? Surely every 3 days the incremental backups should be reset and the backup folders reach a steady state size?
Some details below
Backup folder size and date
Date Size
22-Jun 250Mb
23-Jun 161Mb
24-Jun 368Mb
25-Jun 450Mb
26-Jun 500Mb
27-Jun 1Gb
28-Jun 1.4Gb
29-Jun 1.3Gb
30-Jun 1.5Gb
01-Jul 1.62Gb
02-Jul 1.7Gb
03-Jul 1.8Gb
04-Jul 1.9Gb
05-Jul 2.3Gb
06-Jul 2.55Gb
07-Jul 2.64Gb
08-Jul 3.2Gb
There can be lots of row deletes and inserts on the database but overall the number of rows stays about then same.
If I do
SELECT * FROM V$RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
It shows
Name - /u02/fast_recovery_area
Space limit 42949672960
Space used 32024304640
Space reclaimable 1786222080
Number_of_files 177
If I do a
export ORACLE_SID=CS2DB
rman target sys/sys
delete backup completed before 'sysdate -7';
It deletes all backups older than 7 days except the first one on 2014-06-22 (which was then deleted the next time the RMAN script below was run).
SELECT * FROM V$RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
After a delete sysdate-7 shows..
Space limit 42949672960
Space used 23694853120
Space reclaimable 1786222080
My rman backup script is
#!/bin/sh
. /home/oracle11/.bash_profile
CURR_DATE=`date +%u`
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/rman target / nocatalog log=/home/oracle11/script/log/rman_alo_$CURR_DATE.log << EOF
RUN {
allocate channel ch1 type disk;
RECOVER COPY OF DATABASE WITH TAG "fra_incr_backup_3d" UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE - 3';
BACKUP INCREMENTAL LEVEL 1 FOR RECOVER OF COPY WITH TAG "fra_incr_backup_3d" DATABASE plus archivelog;
delete noprompt obsolete;
release channel ch1;
}
exit;
EOF
The RMAN retention policy is 7 days.
If a full backup is being run every 3 days then why are the incremental backups being kept and things keep getting larger and larger overtime? Surely every 3 days the incremental should reset?
Also why aren't backups being deleted every 7 days?
