Hi All,

Question:

Say I have 3 weeks of backup, and I want to get rid of everything but
one week. Will this REPORT command give me a list of everything I can
delete:

REPORT OBSOLETE UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-7';

Basically, anything outside the time window will be considered
obsolete. And, does this include backups, archive logs, and control
file copies?

We have to implement this and do not have 3 weeks to wait to test this
out.

Thanks,

Arthur

amerar@iwc.net wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Question:
>
> Say I have 3 weeks of backup, and I want to get rid of everything but
> one week. Will this REPORT command give me a list of everything I can
> delete:
>
> REPORT OBSOLETE UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-7';
>
> Basically, anything outside the time window will be considered
> obsolete. And, does this include backups, archive logs, and control
> file copies?
>
> We have to implement this and do not have 3 weeks to wait to test this
> out.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arthur
>

I've always understood that report obsolete gives you the list of backup pieces,
archived logs and what not that rman is going to delete when issuing delete
obsolete. Now why you want to delete this some other way is beyond me, but
you must have your reasons. And yes, rman will delete backups, archived logs,
controlfile copies as long as it is aware of them.

And you don't have to wait for 3 weeks, as soon as anything obsolete pops
out you'll see. And since you have to test before implementing anyway,
you can do so with a smaller retention window.

HTH
Holger

amerar@iwc.net wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Question:
>
> Say I have 3 weeks of backup, and I want to get rid of everything but
> one week. Will this REPORT command give me a list of everything I can
> delete:
>
> REPORT OBSOLETE UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-7';
>
No:
RMAN> REPORT OBSOLETE UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-7';


no obsolete backups found

RMAN>
RMAN> REPORT OBSOLETE;

RMAN retention policy will be applied to the command
RMAN retention policy is set to redundancy 1
Report of obsolete backups and copies
Type Key Completion Time Filename/Handle
-------------------- ------ ------------------ --------------------
Backup Set 27 12-APR-05
Backup Piece 27 12-APR-05
/o/oracle9/920/dbs/0tghmhfs_1_1
Backup Set 28 12-APR-05
Backup Piece 28 12-APR-05
/o/oracle9/920/dbs/0sghmhfs_1_1
Backup Set 29 12-APR-05
Backup Piece 29 12-APR-05
/o/oracle9/920/dbs/0ughmhft_1_1
Backup Set 30 12-APR-05
Backup Piece 30 12-APR-05
/o/oracle9/920/dbs/10ghmhfv_1_1
Backup Set 31 12-APR-05
Backup Piece 31 12-APR-05
/o/oracle9/920/dbs/0vghmhfu_1_1

--
Regards,
Frank van Bortel

We are running Oracle 8i, where retention policies are not yet
implemented.

Basically, I want to run that REPORT OBSOLETE UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-7';
command, then I have written a script to parse the output and create
the proper delete commands.

I just want to make sure that the command does what I think, which is
to report a list of backups that are outside my window, which are the
ones I will delete.

Arthur