RMAN: Restore Points and Recovery Window interactions

From: Guillermo Alan Bort <cicciuxdba@xxxxxxxxx>
To: oracle-l-freelists <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2010 15:54:05 -0300

Hi List,

  I've been working on a backup improvement project and have come across a
limitation in RMAN. We have certain databases that are very large (a few TB)
and a weak backup infrastructure. We are working on taking Online backups of
these databases but for compliance reasons, we need to keep backups for at
least two years. However, we do not need to be able to restore the DB to ANY
point within those two years. So for instance, having a cold backup of at
least two years ago would suffice. Taking a cold backup poses another
problem (duration), but for now I would like to focus on retention.

  We have a default retention of 35 days for regular backups and 730 days
for monthly backups. The 35 days window is manages using 'RECOVERY WINDOW OF
35 DAYS' within RMAN's configuration. Originally my idea was to take the
offline backup and use 'keep until' to modify its retention. However, I am
now faced with a lot of backups that need to be canceled because they run
out of the maintenace window (due to the weak backup infrastructure) and
have to come up with a way of keeping certain online backups without having
to resort to tags to delete some backups.

  I came across 'restore points' when doing some research and was wondering
whether the following would work:

1. Take a full online backup (not level0, full) on a monthly basis, and
immediatly after this full online backup create a restore point and take an
archivelog backup.
2. Keep taking regular backups with a 35 day recovery window.
question: after 60 days, will the full backup taken before the restore point
still be available? will the archivelog backup since that backup up until
the earliest neede backup for the 35 day recovery window be kept or deleted?
If they are deleted, then this could be a valid approach. Does anyone have
any experience with a similar environment?

tia
cheers.
Alan.-

RMAN: Restore Points and Recovery Window interactions

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