Oracle Tips by Burleson

Oracle 10g RMAN Recovery Area Space Management

When the recovery area is less than 90% full, Oracle does not delete eligible files immediately, to minimize the need to restore recent files from tape during recovery. The recovery area can thus serve as a kind of cache for tape.

Once the recovery area is 90% full, Oracle will issue a warning to users.  The Oracle database server and RMAN will continue to create files in the recovery area until 100% of the disk limit is reached. 

Once the recovery area is 100% full, the RMAN retention policy is used to indicate what files will be deleted in order to make space for newer files.

The db_flashback_retention_target parameter specifies how long Oracle will keep the flashback logs in the flashback recovery area.  However, flashback logs won't be deleted, even if they exceed the duration specified by the flashback retention period, unless more space is needed in the recovery area for other files.

New RMAN command for Recovery Area

RMAN> BACKUP RECOVERY AREA;
RMAN> BACKUP RECOVERY FILES;

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