Question: BRBACKUP and BRARCHIVE retention time

Question

Dear experts,
At our company we are performing backups to disk via RMAN. All good, BUT our server, which holds the backups
and the archivelogs is constantly running out of space. According to the company's policies, the retention period
is 14 days, all the backups and archivelogs older than that, can be carelessly deleted. Hence, I have the following
2 questions:
1) I found the following 2 parameter in init<SID>.sap:
# retention period in days for archive log files saved on disk
# default: 30
# cleanup_disk_archive = 30
# retention period in days for database files backed up on disk
# default: 30
# cleanup_disk_backup = 30
Are those the correct parameters ?
2) How is this functionality implemented ? Do brbackup and brarchive only overwrite backups / archivelogs older
than the value specified. Or they are searching for everything older than the retention period in the backup destination
and then purge it... ?
I am asking this question, because we have old backups before and after SAP upgrade and it would be very bad,
if those backups get purged when setting those parameter(s).
Many thanks for your answer(s)!!

Answer 1

Hi Reagan,
there you go, I have removed all the comments from the file to make it more compact:
backup_mode = all
restore_mode = all
backup_type = online_cons
backup_dev_type = rman_disk
backup_root_dir = <path>/sap_backup/<SID>
stage_root_dir = /oracle/<SID>/sapbackup
compress = no
compress_cmd = "compress -c $ > $"
uncompress_cmd = "uncompress -c $ > $"
compress_dir = /oracle/<SID>/sapreorg
archive_function = delete_saved
archive_copy_dir = <path>/sap_backup/<SID>/oraarch
archive_stage_dir = /oracle/<SID>/sapbackup
tape_copy_cmd = cpio
disk_copy_cmd = copy
stage_copy_cmd = rcp
pipe_copy_cmd = rsh
cpio_flags = -ovB
cpio_in_flags = -iuvB
cpio_disk_flags = -pdcu
dd_flags = "obs=64k bs=64k"
dd_in_flags = "ibs=64k bs=64k"
saveset_members = 1
rman_channels = 1
rman_filesperset = 300
_rman_sess_stmt = ("alter session set optimizer_mode=RULE")
rman_parms = "SBT_LIBRARY=/oracle/<SID>/112_64/lib/libddobk.so, ENV=(STORAGE_UNIT=SAP,BACKUP_HOST=wspo013.ages.at)"
copy_out_cmd = "dd ibs=8k obs=64k of=$"
copy_in_cmd = "dd ibs=64k obs=8k if=$"
rewind = "mt -f $ rewind"
rewind_offline = "mt -f $ offline"
tape_pos_cmd = "mt -f $ fsf $"
tape_size = 100G
exec_parallel = 0
tape_address = /dev/rmt/0mn
tape_address_rew = /dev/rmt/0m
volume_archive = (<SID>A01, <SID>A02, <SID>A03, <SID>A04, <SID>A05,
                  <SID>A06, <SID>A07, <SID>A08, <SID>A09, <SID>A10,
                  <SID>A11, <SID>A12, <SID>A13, <SID>A14, <SID>A15,
                  <SID>A16, <SID>A17, <SID>A18, <SID>A19, <SID>A20,
                  <SID>A21, <SID>A22, <SID>A23, <SID>A24, <SID>A25,
                  <SID>A26, <SID>A27, <SID>A28, <SID>A29, <SID>A30)
volume_backup = (<SID>B01, <SID>B02, <SID>B03, <SID>B04, <SID>B05,
                 <SID>B06, <SID>B07, <SID>B08, <SID>B09, <SID>B10,
                 <SID>B11, <SID>B12, <SID>B13, <SID>B14, <SID>B15,
                 <SID>B16, <SID>B17, <SID>B18, <SID>B19, <SID>B20,
                 <SID>B21, <SID>B22, <SID>B23, <SID>B24, <SID>B25,
                 <SID>B26, <SID>B27, <SID>B28, <SID>B29, <SID>B30)
expir_period = 30
tape_use_count = 100
cleanup_disk_archive = 14