CONFIGURE

Syntax

configure::=

Text description of configure

backupConf::=

Text description of backupConf

cfauConf::=

Text description of cfauConf

deviceConf::=

Text description of deviceConf

Purpose

To configure persistent settings affecting RMAN backup, restore, duplication, and maintenance jobs. These configurations are in effect for any RMAN session until the configuration is cleared or changed.

Use CONFIGURE to set the following:

• An ongoing retention policy that automatically determines which backups and copies are eligible for deletion because they are no longer needed
• The device type (for example, DISK or sbt) for RMAN jobs
• The default number of channels of each device type that RMAN should allocate for automated backup and restore jobs
• The settings for automatic channels for a specified device type
• The maximum size of backup pieces and sets created on automatic channels
• Backup optimization either ON or OFF
• The exclusion policy for tablespaces in whole database backups
• The filename of the snapshot control file
• Filenames for files in an auxiliary database
• The control file autobackup feature to ON or OFF
• The default format for the control file autobackup output files

RMAN uses default settings for CONFIGURE options. You can return to the default value for any CONFIGURE command by running the same command with the CLEAR option.

See Also: Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Basics to learn how to configure the RMAN environment

Restrictions and Usage Notes

• Execute this command at the RMAN prompt. CONFIGURE cannot be used within a RUN block.
• The target database must be mounted or open.
• Channels allocated with ALLOCATE CHANNEL override any configured automatic channels.
• RMAN does not simultaneously allocate automatic channels for multiple device types in BACKUP command.
• To direct backups or restores to specific channels, use the RMAN-generated channel names. If you specify channel numbers in the CONFIGURE CHANNEL command, then RMAN uses the same numbers in the system-generated channel names.
• If you configure channels by using the nondefault CONNECT or PARMS options to create backups or copies, then you must either use the same configured channels or manually allocate channels with the same options to restore or crosscheck these backups.
• You cannot exclude the SYSTEM tablespace from whole database backups.
• The REDUNDANCY and RECOVERY WINDOW options are mutually exclusive. Only one type of retention policy can be in effect at any time.
• You cannot clear individual parameters when running CONFIGURE ... CLEAR. For example, you can run CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt CLEAR but not CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt MAXPIECESIZE 5M CLEAR.
• The channel number in a manually numbered channel must be less than 255.
• You must specify at least one channel option when running CONFIGURE CHANNEL. In other words, you cannot issue a command such as CONFIGURE CHANNEL 2 DEVICE TYPE DISK, but you can issue a command such as CONFIGURE CHANNEL 2 DEVICE TYPE DISK MAXPIECESIZE 2500K.
• The CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT format string must include the %F substitution variable. It cannot contain any other substitution variable.
• With Oracle Database Release 10g in a Data Guard environment, configurations can be set for standby databases as well as primary databases. All configurations except for retention policy, tablespace exclude and auxiliary names can be set to node-specific values. This means that the primary and standby databases can have different channel configurations, autobackup locations, and so on.

Keywords and Parameters

configure

Syntax Element	Description
ARCHIVELOG DELETION POLICY TO [ APPLIED ON STANDBY | NONE | CLEAR ]	Governs archived redo log deletion policy for the flash recovery area. Possible settings are: APPLIED ON STANDBY - enables flash recovery area to delete archivelogs that are applied on mandatory standby. See Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for details. NONE - enables flash recovery area to delete archivelogs that are backed up to tertiary device and that are obsolete based on the configured backup retention policy. This is the default configuration. CLEAR - clears the deletion policy and returns the specified configuration to default value. The default value is NONE.
AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE datafileSpec TO 'filename'	Configures the auxiliary filename for the specified target datafile to 'filename'. For example, you can set the auxiliary name for datafile 2 to /df2.f, and then unspecify this auxiliary name by running CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 2 CLEAR. If you are performing TSPITR or running the DUPLICATE command, then by setting AUXNAME you can preconfigure the filenames for use on the auxiliary database without manually specifying the auxiliary filenames during the procedure. For example, use this command during TSPITR if the datafiles are on raw disk and you need to restore auxiliary datafiles to raw disk for performance reasons. Typically, you set the AUXNAME parameter in TSPITR for the datafiles of the SYSTEM tablespace and the tablespaces containing rollback segments. Do not overlay files which are in use by the production database and can be discarded after TSPITR completes. In essence, the AUXNAME of a datafile is the location where TSPITR can create a temporary copy of it. When renaming files with the DUPLICATE command, CONFIGURE AUXNAME is an alternative to SET NEWNAME. The difference is that after you set the AUXNAME the first time, you do not need to reset the filename when you issue another DUPLICATE command: the AUXNAME setting remains in effect until you issue CONFIGURE AUXNAME ... CLEAR. In contrast, you must reissue the SET NEWNAME command every time you rename files. See Also: Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide to learn how to perform RMAN TSPITR, and Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide to learn how to duplicate a database with RMAN
backupConf	Configures default backup options such as duplexing, optimization, excluding tablespaces, backup set sizes, and retention policies.
cfauConf	Configures control file autobackup settings
deviceConf	Configures default backup settings for devices, such as the default backup device, channel configurations for devices, default backup types for each device, and parallelism.
SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME [ TO 'filename' | CLEAR ]	Configures the snapshot control file filename to 'filename'. If you run CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME CLEAR, then RMAN sets the snapshot control file name to its default. The default value for the snapshot control file name is platform-specific and dependent on the Oracle home. For example, the default on some UNIX system is ?/dbs/snapcf_@.f. If you clear the control file name, and you change the Oracle home, then the default location of the snapshot control file changes as well. See Also: Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide for more information about snapshot control files

backupConf

Syntax Element	Description
{ARCHIVELOG | DATAFILE} BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE [=] deviceSpecifier [CLEAR |TO integer]	Specifies the number of copies of each backup set for DATAFILE (both datafiles and control files) or ARCHIVELOG files on the specified device type, from 1 (default) to 4. If duplexing is specified in the BACKUP command or in a SET BACKUP COPIES command, then the CONFIGURE setting is overridden. Note: Control file autobackups on disk are a special case and are never duplexed. RMAN always writes one and only copy. Note: RMAN raises an error if you try to duplex backups to the flash recovery area. You cannot duplex backups to the flash recovery area.
BACKUP OPTIMIZATION [CLEAR | OFF | ON ]	Toggles backup optimization ON or OFF (default). Specify CLEAR to return optimization to its default value of OFF. Optimization does not back up a file to a device type if the identical file is already backed up on the device type. For two files to be identical, their content must be exactly the same. You can override backup optimization by using the FORCE option of the BACKUP command. RMAN does not signal an error if optimization causes all files to be skipped during a backup. Note that BACKUP ... DELETE INPUT deletes all specified files whether or not optimization would skip these files during a backup. Backup optimization is enabled when all of the following conditions are met: The CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION ON command has been run. You run BACKUP DATABASE, BACKUP ARCHIVELOG with ALL or LIKE options, or BACKUP BACKUPSET ALL. The RMAN job uses a channel of only one device type. The retention policy has an effect on which files backup optimization skips. See Also: Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide for a description of how RMAN determines that it can skip the backup of a file
EXCLUDE FOR TABLESPACE tablespace_name [ CLEAR ]	Excludes the specified tablespace from BACKUP DATABASE commands. Note that you cannot exclude the SYSTEM tablespace. By default, each tablespace is not excluded, that is, the exclude functionality is disabled. The exclusion is stored as an attribute of the tablespace, not the individual datafiles, so the exclusion applies to any files that are added to this tablespace in the future. If you run CONFIGURE ... CLEAR on a tablespace after excluding it, then it returns to the default configuration of "not excluded." You can still back up the configured tablespace by explicitly specifying it in a BACKUP command or by specifying the NOEXCLUDE option on a BACKUP DATABASE command.
MAXSETSIZE [ CLEAR | TO [ sizeSpec | UNLIMITED ]	Specifies the maximum size of each backup set created on a channel. By default MAXSETSIZE is set to UNLIMITED, meaning that it is disabled. Note: This option is ignored by BACKUP AS COPY.
RETENTION POLICY	Specifies a persistent, ongoing policy for datafile and control file backups and copies that RMAN marks as obsolete, that is, not needed and eligible for deletion. As time passes, RMAN marks backups and copies as obsolete according to the criteria you specify in the retention policy. RMAN does not automatically delete any backups or copies: manually run the DELETE OBSOLETE command to remove obsolete files. By default, RETENTION POLICY is configured to REDUNDANCY 1. For backups, the basic unit of the retention policy is a backup set (not a backup piece) or image copy. For example, BACKUP AS BACKUPSET COPIES 4 TABLESPACE users generates a single backup set that is duplexed into four identical backup pieces. The retention policy considers this as one backup, not four separate backups.
CLEAR	Resets the retention policy to its default (REDUNDANCY = 1).
TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF integer DAYS	Specifies a time window in which RMAN should be able to recover the database. The window stretches from the current time (SYSDATE) to the point of recoverability, which is the earliest date to which you want to recover. The point of recoverability is SYSDATE - integer days in the past.
TO REDUNDANCY integer	Specifies that RMAN should retain integer backups or copies of each datafile and control file. If more than integer backups or copies exist, RMAN marks these extra files as obsolete. Then, RMAN determines the oldest of the retained backups and copies, and marks all archived logs and log backups older than this backup or copy as obsolete. The DELETE OBSOLETE command removes obsolete backups and copies as well as archived log backups and copies.
TO NONE	Disables the retention policy feature. RMAN does not consider any backups or copies as obsolete.

cfauConf

Syntax Element	Description
CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP	Controls the control file autobackup feature. By default, this feature is not enabled.
CLEAR	Returns the feature to its default setting of OFF.
FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE deviceSpecifier [ CLEAR | TO formatSpec ]	Configures the default filename format for the control file autobackup on the specified device type. If a flash recovery area is enabled, then RMAN creates the disk autobackup in the flash recovery area. Otherwise, RMAN creates it in an operating system specific location (?/dbs on Unix and Windows). By default, the initial format is %F for all devices. Any default format string specified with CONFIGURE must include the %F substitution variable. %F is the only legal substitution variable for use in a control file autobackup format. Use of any other substitution variable is an error. Specify CLEAR to return the format to the default %F. The formatSpec can specify an Automatic Storage Management disk group. The following example configures a channel for an ASM disk group: CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '+dgroup1'; See Also: "formatSpec", for the semantics of the %F substitution variable.
OFF	Disables the autobackup feature. (OFF is the default value.) When this command is OFF, any BACKUP command that includes datafile 1 (including BACKUP DATABASE) automatically includes the current control file and server parameter file in the backup set. Otherwise, RMAN does not include these files.
ON	If CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP is ON (by default it is OFF), then RMAN performs a control file autobackup in the following circumstances: After every BACKUP or CREATE CATALOG command issued at the RMAN prompt. Whenever a BACKUP command within a RUN block is followed by a command that is not BACKUP. At the end of every RUN block if the last command in the block was BACKUP. After database structural changes such as adding a new tablespace, altering the state of a tablespace or datafile (for example, bringing it online), adding a new online redo log, renaming a file, adding a new redo thread, and so forth. This type of autobackup, unlike autobackups that occur in the preceding circumstances, goes only to disk. You can run CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK to set a nondefault disk location. The first channel allocated during the backup or copy job creates the autobackup and places it into its own backup set; for post-structural autobackups, the default disk channel makes the backup. RMAN writes the control file and the server parameter file to the same backup piece. After the control file autobackup completes, the database writes a message containing the complete path of the backup piece and the device type to the alert log. The default location for the autobackup on disk is the flash recovery area (if configured) or a platform-specific location (if not configured). RMAN automatically backs up the current control file using the default format of %F (refer to entry for CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT for an explanation of this substitution variable). You can change the location and filename format with the CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT and SET CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT commands.

deviceConf

Syntax Element	Description
[AUXILIARY] CHANNEL [ integer ] DEVICE TYPE deviceSpecifier	Specifies the standard or AUXILIARY channel that you are configuring or clearing, as well as the device type (DISK or sbt) of the channel. Either configure a generic channel or specify a channel number, where integer is less than 255. If you configure a generic channel (that is, if you do not specify a channel number), then RMAN uses the generic settings for every parallelized channel except any channel number that you have explicitly configured. A generic channel setting specifies options for all channels not configured explicitly. For generic channels of a specified device type, a new command erases previous settings for this device type. Assume that you run these commands: CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt MAXPIECESIZE 1G; CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt FORMAT 'bkup_%U'; The second command erases the MAXPIECESIZE setting of the first command. If AUXILIARY is specified, then this configuration is used only for channels allocated at the auxiliary instance. Specify configuration information for auxiliary channels if they require different parameters from the channels allocated at the target instance. If no auxiliary device configuration is specified, then RMAN configures any auxiliary channels using the target database device configuration. See Also: Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide to learn how configure automatic channels specified by channel number
allocOperandList	Specifies control options for the allocated channel. Note that the FORMAT parameter can specify an Automatic Storage Management disk group. The following example configures a channel for an ASM disk group: CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '+dgroup1'; See Also: "allocOperandList"
CLEAR	Clears the specified channel. For example, CONFIGURE CHANNEL 1 DEVICE TYPE DISK CLEAR returns only channel 1 to its default, whereas CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK CLEAR returns the generic disk channel to its default. Note that you cannot specify any other channel options (for example, PARMS) when you specify CLEAR.
DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE [ TO deviceSpecifier | CLEAR ]	Specifies the default device type for automatic channels. By default, DISK is the default device type. CLEAR returns the default device type to DISK. By default, the BACKUP command only allocates channels of the default device type. For example, if you configure automatic channels for DISK and sbt and set the default device type to DISK, then RMAN only allocates disk channels when you run the BACKUP DATABASE command. You can override this behavior either by manually allocating channels in a RUN command, or by specifying DEVICE TYPE on the BACKUP command itself. The RESTORE command allocates automatic channels of all configured device types, regardless of the default device type. The RESTORE command obeys the PARALLELISM setting for each configured device type.
DEVICE TYPE [ = ] deviceSpecifier	Specifies the device type (disk or sbt) to which to apply the settings specified in this CONFIGURE command.
CLEAR	Resets backup type and parallelism settings for this device to their defaults..
BACKUP TYPE TO [ COPY | [ COMPRESSED ] BACKUPSET]	Configures the default backup type for disk or tape backups to either BACKUPSET, COMPRESSED BACKUPSET or COPY. For sbt devices the COPY option is not supported. The default for DISK is BACKUPSET. If the backup type is set to BACKUPSET, the BACKUP command always produces backup sets regardless of which media the backup is produced on. With the COMPRESSED option, the backupsets produced will use binary compression. The default location for disk backups is the flash recovery area, if one is configured; otherwise, backups are stored in a platform-specific location (for Unix and Windows, this is $ORACLE_HOME/dbs). The default format for backup filenames is %U.
PARALLELISM integer	Configures the device types that are eligible for use in jobs that use automatic channels and sets the degree of channel parallelism (DISK is the default). The PARALLELISM parameter sets the number of automatic channels of the specified device type allocated for RMAN jobs. RMAN always allocates the number of channels set by PARALLELISM, although it may use only a subset of these channels. By default, PARALLELISM = 1. Specifying CLEAR for a device type resets its settings to the default. For example, you can set PARALLELISM for disk backups to 3. If you configure automatic channels of type disk and tape, and set the default device type as disk, then RMAN allocates three disk channels when you run BACKUP DATABASE at the RMAN prompt. To change the parallelism for a device type to n, run a new CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE ... PARALLELISM n command. For example, you can change configure PARALLELISM to 3 for sbt and then change it to 2 as follows: CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE sbt PARALLELISM 3; CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE sbt PARALLELISM 2; Note: If you configure n manually numbered channels, the PARALLELISM setting can be greater than or less than n. For example, you can manually number 10 automatic channels and configure PARALLELISM to 2 or 12.

Examples

Configuring Backup Optimization: Example

This example configures RMAN so that the BACKUP command does not back up files to a device type if the identical file has already been backed up to the device type:

CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION ON;

Configuring a Retention Policy: Example

This example configures a retention policy with a recovery window of 2 weeks, and then resets the retention policy to its default value of REDUNDANCY = 1:

CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 14 DAYS;
CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY CLEAR;

Configuring Automatic Disk and Tape Channels: Example

This example configures generic DISK and sbt channels, sets the default device type to sbt, and sets PARALLELISM to 3:

CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/?/%U';
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt PARMS 'ENV=(NSR_SERVER=bksrv1)';
CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO sbt;
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE sbt PARALLELISM 3;

Overriding the Default Device Type: Example

This example configures the default device type to sbt, backs up the archived logs on the default sbt channel, and then backs up the database to disk on the default disk channel:

CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt PARMS 'ENV=(NSR_SERVER=bksrv1)';
CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO sbt;
BACKUP ARCHIVELOG ALL;
BACKUP DEVICE TYPE DISK DATABASE;

Configuring Automatic Channels Across File Systems: Example

This example configures automatic disk channels across three file systems:

CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK PARALLELISM 3;
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 1 DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/disk1/backup/%U';
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 2 DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/disk2/backup/%U';
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 3 DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT '/disk3/backup/%U';
BACKUP DEVICE TYPE DISK DATABASE PLUS ARCHIVELOG;

Configuring Automatic Channels in an Oracle Real Application Clusters Configuration: Example

This example allocates automatic sbt channels for two nodes of an Oracle Real Application Clusters database:

CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE sbt PARALLELISM 2;
CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO sbt;
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 1 DEVICE TYPE sbt CONNECT 'SYS/change_on_install@node1'
  PARMS 'ENV=(NSR_SERVER=bkserv1)';
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 2 DEVICE TYPE sbt CONNECT 'SYS/change_on_install@node2'
  PARMS ENV=(NSR_SERVER=bkserv2)';

Clearing Automatic Channels: Example

This example clears manually numbered DISK channels 2 and 3 and the generic sbt channel:

CONFIGURE CHANNEL 2 DEVICE TYPE DISK CLEAR;
CONFIGURE CHANNEL 3 DEVICE TYPE DISK CLEAR;
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt CLEAR;

Configuring and Clearing Parallelism: Example

This example sets DISK parallelism to 2, then changes it to 3, then returns it to the default parallelism of 1:

CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK PARALLELISM 2;
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK PARALLELISM 3;
CONFIGURE DEVICE TYPE DISK CLEAR;

Configuring Backup Copies: Example

This example configures duplexing to 3 for DISK backups of datafiles and control files (control file autobackups on disk are a special case and are never duplexed) and then runs a database backup, specifying three different file systems for the copies:

CONFIGURE DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO 3;
BACKUP DEVICE TYPE DISK DATABASE 
  FORMAT '/disk1/backup/%U', '/disk2/backup/%U', '/disk3/backup/%U';

Configuring the Snapshot Control File Location: Example

This example configures a new location for the snapshot control file and then resynchronizes the recovery catalog.

CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME TO '?/oradata/snap.cf';

Excluding a Tablespace from a Whole Database Backup: Example

This example excludes the example tablespace from whole database backups, then returns the tablespace to its default value of "not excluded":

CONFIGURE EXCLUDE FOR TABLESPACE example;
CONFIGURE EXCLUDE CLEAR;

Specifying Auxiliary Filenames: Example

This example duplicates a database to a remote host with a different directory structure, by using CONFIGURE AUXNAME to specify new filenames for the datafiles:

# set auxiliary names for the datafiles 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 1 TO '/oracle/auxfiles/aux_1.f'; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 2 TO '/oracle/auxfiles/aux_2.f'; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 3 TO '/oracle/auxfiles/aux_3.f'; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 4 TO '/oracle/auxfiles/aux_4.f'; 

RUN
{  
  ALLOCATE AUXILIARY CHANNEL dupdb1 TYPE DISK;
  DUPLICATE TARGET DATABASE TO dupdb 
  LOGFILE
    GROUP 1 ('?/dbs/dupdb_log_1_1.f', 
             '?/dbs/dupdb_log_1_2.f') SIZE 200K, 
    GROUP 2 ('?/dbs/dupdb_log_2_1.f', 
             '?/dbs/dupdb_log_2_2.f') SIZE 200K REUSE; 
}
# Un-specify the auxiliary names for the datafiles so that they are not overwritten 
# by mistake:
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 1 CLEAR; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 2 CLEAR; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 3 CLEAR; 
CONFIGURE AUXNAME FOR DATAFILE 4 CLEAR; 

Specifying the Default Format for the Control File Autobackup: Example

This example turns on the autobackup feature, then changes the default format for the DISK and sbt devices, then clears the autobackup setting:

CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP ON; 
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE DISK TO '?/oradata/%F';
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE sbt TO 'cf_auto_%F';
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP CLEAR;   # returns to default setting of OFF