Recovery window retention policy deletes archive logs before a backup?

Question

Hi All,
Oracle 11G on Windows 2008 R2
This afternoon, I changed my RMAN retention policy from 'RETENTION POLICY REDUNDANCY 3' to RETENTION POLICY RECOVERY WINDOW OF 3 DAYS'
However, i checked tonight and after my daily backup ran, all the archive logs prior to the backup had been deleted! Thus meaning i dont think i can restore to any point in time, prior to my daily backup. All the .arc logs were there after the backup. So i tried another test and kicked off the daily backup again. During the backup process, the archive logs got deleted again! Now i don't have any archive logs..
Is this proper behaviour of RETENTION POLICY RECOVERY WINDOW?? I thought it would keep all the files needed for me to restore to any point in time for the previous 3 days. When i used REDUNDANCY, with my daily backups, it kept 3 days worth of backups+ archive logs so i could restore point-in-time to any point. How can i use RECOVERY WINDOW so that i can actually restore to any point-in-time for the 3 days??
I wanted to change to RECOVERY WINDOW since i read that by using REDUNDANCY it only keeps X copies of a backup (so if i ran the backup 3 times in a day, i would only have those 3).
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi All,
Here is the SHOW ALL output:
RMAN> show all;
RMAN configuration parameters for database with db_unique_name MMSPRD7 are:
CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 3 DAYS;
CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION OFF; # default
CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO DISK; # default
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP ON;
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '%F'; # default
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK PARALLELISM 1 BACKUP TYPE TO BACKUPSET; # default
CONFIGURE DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 1; # default
CONFIGURE MAXSETSIZE TO UNLIMITED; # default
CONFIGURE ENCRYPTION FOR DATABASE OFF; # default
CONFIGURE ENCRYPTION ALGORITHM 'AES128'; # default
CONFIGURE COMPRESSION ALGORITHM 'BASIC' AS OF RELEASE 'DEFAULT' OPTIMIZE FOR LOA
D TRUE ; # default
CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO NONE; # default
CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME TO 'D:\ORACLE\DATABASE\ORA11G\DATABASE\SNCFM
MSPRD7.ORA'; # default
Here is the RMAN script:
Recovery Manager: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Mon Jan 20 23:03:12 2014
Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
connected to target database: XXX (DBID=)
RMAN> CROSSCHECK ARCHIVELOG ALL;
2> CROSSCHECK BACKUPSET;
3> CROSSCHECK BACKUP;
4> CROSSCHECK COPY;
5> DELETE NOPROMPT EXPIRED ARCHIVELOG ALL;
6> DELETE NOPROMPT EXPIRED BACKUPSET;
7> DELETE NOPROMPT OBSOLETE;
8> BACKUP CURRENT CONTROLFILE;
9> BACKUP AS COMPRESSED BACKUPSET DATABASE PLUS ARCHIVELOG DELETE INPUT;
Also, not sure if you needed the whole RMAN output, but here is the deletion part:
RMAN retention policy will be applied to the command
RMAN retention policy is set to recovery window of 3 days
using channel ORA_DISK_1
Deleting the following obsolete backups and copies:
Type                 Key    Completion Time    Filename/Handle
Backup Set           1392   15-JAN-14        
  Backup Piece       1392   15-JAN-14          F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_15\O1_MF_NNNDF_TAG20140115T190054_9FG89R8N_.BKP
Backup Set           1393   15-JAN-14        
  Backup Piece       1393   15-JAN-14          F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_15\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140115T192204_9FG9KDHX_.BKP
Backup Set           1397   16-JAN-14        
  Backup Piece       1397   16-JAN-14          F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_16\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140116T190027_9FJWNW6L_.BKP
Backup Set           1400   17-JAN-14        
  Backup Piece       1400   17-JAN-14          F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_17\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140117T190138_9FMK349M_.BKP
deleted backup piece
backup piece handle=F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_15\O1_MF_NNNDF_TAG20140115T190054_9FG89R8N_.BKP RECID=1392 STAMP=836938856
deleted backup piece
backup piece handle=F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_15\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140115T192204_9FG9KDHX_.BKP RECID=1393 STAMP=836940124
deleted backup piece
backup piece handle=F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_16\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140116T190027_9FJWNW6L_.BKP RECID=1397 STAMP=837025228
deleted backup piece
backup piece handle=F:\ORAFRA\MMSPRD7\BACKUPSET\2014_01_17\O1_MF_ANNNN_TAG20140117T190138_9FMK349M_.BKP RECID=1400 STAMP=837111700
Deleted 4 objects