Database Administration

[rachelle]

I have been assigned and working for few months with the administration of Oracle database. How should I handle the archivelog file? Can I delete the entire archivelog file or take back up of all the archivelog file or only backup of redo log files. Kindly suggest me your opinion on this.

[zeshanali76]

U must not delete the archive logs. first of all take the Offline backup of the database, Startup the database. When started succesfully, then u can delete the old archives. But keep in mind for VLDB (Very Large Databases) Administrators take individual backup of Tablespaces one by one so u must take backup of archive logs also. ok. Be carefull.

Zeeshan Ali Awan
zesh @ inbox.com

[Adrian]

The best way to carry out the process of backup and achieving of database while administrating database is first take entire whole database backup by using BACKUP DATABASE command in RMAN mode. After doing this entire backup process of database don’t forget to do archiving of logs. This process would give you a further validation of possessing the entire archived logs when the next backup is taken which you can use in need of restoring process.

[1rstDev]

backup database plus archive log;

[Larry Cumber]

If you have the archivelogs then it means you database is in archivelog mode (archiving the redo logs). which similarly means the was a reason for activating archiving.
which gives you the ability to perform online backups, hoping its been set to automatic archiving and not manual
use ARCHIVE LOG LIST to verify database mode and destination and log sequence.
You have the ability to carry an OPEN BACKUP/hot or online backup.
Carry out a backup as Adrian said, preferable using the RMAN.
The importance of Archiving logs is that is gives you different options in the Recovery process - and this logs would be applied to bring the database to its original state if it Crashed. Don't delete this archivelogs. instead it would be nice for you to save keep them in a seperate directory in order to aid perfomance