Archivelog Deletion Policy for RMAN

RMAN archive deletion policy is used to set when we want archived logs to be deleted when DELETE ARCHIVELOG command is executed from the RMAN prompt, or if we are using Fast Recovery Area for archived logs, and are not deleting archived logs manually and relying on automatic feature of Oracle for deletion of archived logs (archive deletion would happen automatically if space crunch is observed by Oracle under fast recovery area).

If we are doing archived deletion manually using RMAN command, and deletion policy is set to either “CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO NONE” or something like “CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO BACKED UP 1 TIMES “, archived logs would get delete. However, if  policy is set similar to “CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED(OR SHIPPED) ON STANDBY” Oracle would not automatically delete archived redo logs if these logs have not yet been applied/shipped, and would show warning RMAN-08137 as explained below.

RMAN-08591: WARNING: invalid archived log deletion policy

If we configure archivelog deletion policy to “APPLIED ON STAND BY” or “SHIPPED ON STANDBY” using command “CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED ON STANDY”, you may see this warning reported during setting this configuration

RMAN> configure ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED ON standby; old RMAN configuration parameters: CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO NONE; new RMAN configuration parameters: CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED ON STANDBY; new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored RMAN-08591: WARNING: invalid archived log deletion policy

And same warning will appear while deleting the archived logs using RMAN command.

The reason of this warning is that this deletion policy configuration needs at least one standby destination set as MANDATORY in log_archive_dest_n parameter. MANDATORY archive destination would mean that redo logs on primary database would not get reused until archived/redo data is shipped to mandatory destination. Set a standby destination as mandatory carefully because your primary database will not reuse redo logs until redo data from that redo log has been shipped to the mandatory destination, and primary database would eventually hang if all redo logs have been used and data is still not shipped to the mandatory destination.

To avoid this warning without any mandatory destination, set archive deletion policy to "APPLIED ON ALL STANDBY" or “SHIPPED TO ALL STANDBY”.

RMAN> CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED ON ALL STANDBY old RMAN configuration parameters: CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO NONE; new RMAN configuration parameters: CONFIGURE ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO APPLIED ON ALL STANDBY; new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored

RMAN-08137: WARNING: archived log not deleted, needed for standby or upstream capture process

If your standby is down or archive destination for that standby is set to DEFER and you try to delete archived logs, you will see this warning message and archived logs would not get deleted. You can safely ignore this message if a copy of archived logs already exists on standby destination and can delete archived logs forcefully.

RMAN-08120: WARNING: archived log not deleted, not yet applied by standby

This warning will come if you have set archivelog deletion policy to “APPLIED ON ALL STANDBY”. You can safely ignore this as this message because this is just to inform you that some archived logs have not been deleted.