Retention policy vs. Archivelog deletion policy

Question

Environment:
Oracle EE 11.2.0.3 on Solaris 10.5
Which policy takes precedence?
My Retention Policy is set to 'Recovery window of 8 days' and my Archivelog deletion policy is set to 'backed up 2 times to disk'.
My DAILY full backup happens at 03:00am and uses the following commands:
backup incremental level 0 cumulative database tag 'full_daily' plus archivelog tag 'full_daily';
DELETE NOPROMPT OBSOLETE;I also have an archivelog backup that runs every 4 hours at 02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00 and 22:00 and looks like this:
backup archivelog all tag '&1';
delete noprompt ARCHIVELOG UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-8';With the archivelog backup running every 4 hours the logs are getting backed up to disk the required 2 times very quickly. Much sooner than 8 days! :-)
I have a problem where the archivelog backup that runs immediately AFTER the full database backup fails due to not being able to find some older archivelog files.
In looking at V$ARCHIVED_LOG the files were dated (COMPLETION_DATE) just outside the 8 day retention window but they had a status of 'A' (Archived) instead of the 'D' (Deleted) I was expecting. When I ran a 'Crosscheck archivelog all' it changed the statuses to 'D' and the next archivelog backup ran successfully.
What am I missing?
Should I change the archivelog deletion policy to something else? If so, what and why (just trying to understand!) ?
I am not using an FRA and have controlfile autobackup turned on.
Please let me know if you need more information. I have been scouring the docs and the 11g RMAN Oracle Press book but haven't found the trick yet!
Thanks for any assistance!
-gary

Answer 1

Hemant K Chitale wrote:
The Retention Policy applies to Backups. It does not apply to ArchiveLogs.
The ArchiveLog Deletion Policy applies to ArchiveLogs. It does not apply to Backups.
Since you have 2 copies of ArchiveLogs in the backups and these are retained for 8 days, a "delete noprompt ARCHIVELOG UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-8';" is overkill. Why retain 8 days of archivelogs on disk if there are 2 copies already backed up ?
Does your full backup that begins at 3am complete before 6am ? If it goes beyond 6am, it will be deleting some files after 6am but the "backup archivelog all" at 6am will expect some archivelogs (8 days old) to be present.
Hemant K Chitale
RMAN> CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '/oracle/oracle/.Autobackup_CTRL/%F.ctl_bkp';    
Starting backup at 22-MAY-12
using channel ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00001 name=/oracle/oracle/oradata/orcl/system01.dbf
output file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/datafile/o1_mf_system_7vpg432v_.dbf tag=TAG20120522T122602 RECID=1 STAMP=783951999
channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:00:46
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00002 name=/oracle/oracle/oradata/orcl/sysaux01.dbf
output file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/datafile/o1_mf_sysaux_7vpg5l1n_.dbf tag=TAG20120522T122602 RECID=2 STAMP=783952038
channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:00:35
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00003 name=/oracle/oracle/oradata/orcl/undotbs01.dbf
output file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/datafile/o1_mf_undotbs1_7vpg6ms0_.dbf tag=TAG20120522T122602 RECID=3 STAMP=783952046
channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:00:03
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
input datafile file number=00004 name=/oracle/oracle/oradata/orcl/users01.dbf
output file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/datafile/o1_mf_users_7vpg6ptn_.dbf tag=TAG20120522T122602 RECID=4 STAMP=783952047
channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:00:03
Finished backup at 22-MAY-12
Starting Control File and SPFILE Autobackup at 22-MAY-12
piece handle=/oracle/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/dbs/controlfile_c-1309370544-20120522-02 comment=NONE
Finished Control File and SPFILE Autobackup at 22-MAY-12
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
RMAN-08132: WARNING: cannot update recovery area reclaimable file list
old RMAN configuration parameters:
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '%F';
new RMAN configuration parameters:
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '/oracle/oracle/.Autobackup_CTRL/%F.ctl_bkp';
new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored
RMAN> delete noprompt ARCHIVELOG UNTIL TIME 'SYSDATE-8';
released channel: ORA_DISK_1
allocated channel: ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: SID=196 device type=DISK
RMAN-08138: WARNING: archived log not deleted - must create more backups
archived log file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/archivelog/2012_04_28/o1_mf_1_2_7sq8tf5p_.arc thread=1 sequence=2
RMAN-08138: WARNING: archived log not deleted - must create more backups
archived log file name=/oracle/oracle/flash_recovery_area/ORCL/archivelog/2012_05_22/o1_mf_1_3_7vpdcjjm_.arc thread=1 sequence=3
ORA-00604: error occurred at recursive SQL level 1
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
RMAN-08132: WARNING: cannot update recovery area reclaimable file list
RMAN> having problem with Archivelog backup.