Changing Retention Policy Status of RMAN Backups

Use CHANGE... KEEP or CHANGE... NOKEEP to specify whether a backup should be subject to the configured retention policy or kept until a different date or even indefinitely.

The KEEP option exempts a backup from the current retention policy either indefinitely or until the specified UNTIL time. RMAN does not mark the files as obsolete even if they would be considered obsolete under the retention policy. Such backups are called long-term backups. CHANGE ... NOKEEP is used to undo the effects of CHANGE ... KEEP, so that the configured retention policy applies to the backup.

For example, the following command blocks RMAN from considering backupsets with the tag 'year_end_2002' as obsolete under the retention policy:

RMAN> CHANGE BACKUPSET TAG year_end_2002 KEEP FOREVER NOLOGS;

To allow backupsets with the tag year_end_2002 to be marked as obsolete based on the retention policy, use this command:

RMAN> CHANGE BACKUPSET TAG year_end_2002 NOKEEP;

If you want to prevent the use of a backup marked with KEEP in restore and recovery operations, then mark these backups as UNAVAILABLE. RMAN will not delete the records for these backups from the RMAN repository, but will not try to use them in restore and recovery until they are marked AVAILABLE again.