Removing RMAN Oracle backups from the Tivoli Storage Manager Server

Answer

When deleting backups with RMAN and Data Protection for Oracle, there are various ways that the deletions can be performed. For example:

• An Oracle script could be utilized with crosscheck using the Oracle DELETE OBSOLETE and DELETE EXPIRED commands.
• An RMAN script could be used to issue the command to CHANGE the backuppiece for deletion,
• If the RMAN Global parameters for RECOVERY WINDOW or REDUNDANCY are set, then a maintenance channel could be allocated to process the deletions based on these retentions.

When running any of these commands, it is very important to ensure that the same environment variables are used for the deletion as were specified for the backups. Specifically, the TDPO_OPTFILE= setting would need to be the same as what was used during the backup.

The TDPOSYNC SYNCDB utility is only needed when old objects remain on the Tivoli Storage Manager Server but have been removed from the RMAN catalog. This can occur if the Tivoli Storage Manager Server is not available when the RMAN deletions are being performed, or if the environment settings for the deletion did not match what was used for the backup. Once an object is removed from the RMAN catalog, any deletion attempt will not find the object in the catalog and, as a result, the deletion request is not processed. In this case, it is necessary to run the TDPOSYNC SYNCDB utility in order to synchronize the Tivoli Storage Manager Server to the RMAN repository and remove those objects from the Tivoli Storage Manager Server that no longer exist in the RMAN catalog.