Useful RMAN Commands to Resolve Backup Tickets

Question 1 :- What Action DBAs can take when /oraarchive is full.

Answer :- Most of Production database backup are setup to delete archivelogs from /oraarchive
whenever archives backup has been completed .We are still having some exception cases
where we cant delete archivelog files which is taken in RMAN backup. We are having FBU
Reporting instance CFGNAREP which is getting cloned everyday from CFGNAPRD using
Shadow Imaging Replication. If we will delete archive log from original location then we
may get issue with Reporting Creation. In Such cases you can delete archives from original
location using below command.
Example :- MFGGPXY is having archivelogs since last 4 days.

We need to delete archivelogs created older than 2 days. Considering yesterday H*

backup has been completed successfully.

After deleting archivelogs using RMAN command.

DO NOT DELETE OR COMPRESS ARCHIVELOGS

OTHERWISE NEXT DAY RMAN BACKUP WILL FAIL.

FROM

UNIX

COMMAND

QUESTION 2 :- What Action DBAs can take whenever /orabackup is full.

Answer :- We need to check /orabackup has been be full due to RMAN backup or Filesystem
backup. If there are large log/output files are generated then we need to take proper
action by finding that file from backup as well as original location and try to delete that file
from original and backup location
If issue with RMAN backup DBAs can go to /orabackup/$SID and look for
rman_arch folder size. If you can release space from rman_arch then use below command
to clear the archivelogs backup . We assume that last day of H* backup has been
completed and yesterdays backup has been already moved to tape. So we can delete
archive log backup of 2 days older archivelogs.
Example :- apsgpxy is having backup of 10 days older archivelogs. I want to delete all the
archivelogs backup which are older that 2 days.

As per above screenshot we are having archivelogs backup of last 10 days. And
/orabackup is getting full. We can delete archivelogs backup of older than 2 days using
below command.

After archivelog backup has been deleted below is size of rman_arch.

Queston 3 :- How do we make sure that whatever RMAN Backup has been completed
that is valid backup to do restore.
Answer :- ADSC_BACKUP script is validating each H* backup after taking backup. All validation
has been stored in logfile /orabackup/$SID/rman_log/H*_$DATE_$TIME/
$SID_rmanvalidate.txt. If this logfile does not show any error means our RMAN backup is
valid.

Question 4 :- What to do if someone has deleted or compressed archivelog files from

unix command.
Answer :- Below is example how we can fix this issue. APSGPXY is having 4 archivelogs.We
have compressed one archive logfile from unix command and we have deleted one
archivelog from unix.

RMAN is getting archivelog details from Data Dictionary Views. We used unix command to
compress file that means data dictionary view still show that we need to take backup of
apsgpxy_0001_0000001272_0763634467.arc and
apsgpxy_0001_0000001275_0763634467.arc. When RMAN will try to find those files in
unix, Both files will not present and backup will fail. To avoid this situation we need to
clear compressed/deleted archivelogs entry from data dictionary views using below
command.

Question 5 :- What to do if someone has deleted rman backup from unix command.
Answer :- You need to follow the same steps like we used in question 4. Command will change
as below. Crosscheck command will verify backup with data dictionaries. And Delete
expired backup command will clear data dictionary entries for removed backups. You can
see screenshots below.