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Never been able to fully grasp the notion of delete input/delete input all when backup up Archivelog with rman.

Tied to the same issue is the configure Archivelog deletion policy to backed up X times to disk.

Deleting input, or deleting input all, seems counterintuitive to me when the deletion policy is set to 7 times to match an overall backup policy of 7 days.

Is there anyone here who can explain to someone who may be just a little dense how this all plays together? And what should the Archivelog deletion policy be if the goal is to have one week’s worth of backups available at all times? All backups are weekly backed up to a tape drive. With seven days as overall, and 7 times on Archivelog deletions policy, am I backing it up 7 times or 7 times 7 times?

Thank you for any help anyone can offer……

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Am a bit confused about what exactly is your question(s). Let me see if I can answer (at least) some part:

Never been able to fully grasp the notion of delete input/delete input all when backup up Archivelog with rman.

I believe you are talking about DELETE INPUT part of the syntax of BACKUP command. This part tells oracle to delete the archived logs that exist at the time BACKUP command is run (as well as those generated during the execution of BACKUP command) ONLY AFTER BACKUP has successfully backed up the archived logs. Without this part, the archived logs are not deleted.

Deleting input, or deleting input all, seems counterintuitive to me when the deletion policy is set to 7 times to match an overall backup policy of 7 days.

A deletion policy is used by Oracle to manage the space in flash recovery area. Oracle can delete archived logs in flash recovery area when the flash recovery area is full and there exist archived logs that satisfy deletion policy criteria i.e. if deletion policy criteria is set to 2 days and the flash recovery area gets full, say, on Thursday then oracle will automatically delete archived logs older than 2 days (i.e. before Wednesday) to free up the space.

And what should the Archivelog deletion policy be if the goal is to have one week’s worth of backups available at all times?

That depends upon a) How much data loss is the business/company is prepared to tolerate? & b) What is the SLA (Service Level Agreement) time for recovery of database & c) your backup strategy (hot/cold, full/incremental, image copy/backupset etc.)

Hope this helps.

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Thank you. Why do you need to delete archive logs that are being backed up? Backing them up places them in a file for safe keeping. When you delete input, or delete input all, what is it that gets deleted? Certainly not what you just put in a bu for safe keeping? If you do not delete input, does the db just keep adding to the same log? – michelle daniel Jan 31 '12 at 0:22
And if one wants seven days of backups, and archive logs to match, is a seven day deletion policy on archived logs right? – michelle daniel Jan 31 '12 at 0:23
> Why do you need to delete archive logs that are being backed up? – Narendra Jan 31 '12 at 10:21
You don't have to delete archive logs but if disk space is an issue then you may want to delete the archived logs once they are backed up. BACKUP command creates a copy of the archived logs and DELETE INPUT (ALL) part removes the source archived logs (not the copy). If you don't use DELETE INPUT and do not delete archived logs explicitly then oracle will use retention policy configuration to automatically remove archived logs that are considered obsolete if you are using flash recovery area (FRA) and the quota allocated to FRA gets completely occupied. – Narendra Jan 31 '12 at 10:27
As for wanting seven days of backups, it depends upon your backup strategy. For e.g. you can take an incremental level 0 backup on weekend and a daily incremental level 1 backup (either cumulative or differential). That way you can maintain seven days backups, while maintaining archived logs only since the last successful (incremental level 1) backup. – Narendra Jan 31 '12 at 10:30

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